the ten
commandments. Suppose you go to the Cannibal Islands to prevent the
gentlemen there from eating missionaries, and you found they ate them
raw. The first move is to induce them to cook them. After you get
them to eat cooked missionaries, you will then, without their knowing
it, occasionally slip in a little mutton. We will go on gradually
decreasing missionaries and increasing mutton until finally the last
will be so cultivated that they will prefer the sheep to the priest, I
think the missionaries would object to that mode, of course.

I know this was written by the Jews themselves. If they were to write
it now, it would be different. Today they are a civilized people. I
do not wish it understood that a word I say tonight touches the
slightest prejudice in any man's mind against the Jewish people. They
are as good a people as live today. I will say right here, they never
had any luck until Jehovah abandoned them.

Now we come to the new testament. They tell me that is better than the
old, I say it is worse. The great objection to the old testament is
that it is cruel; but in the old testament the revenge of God stopped
with the portals of the tomb. He never threatened punishment after
death. He never threatened one thing beyond the grave. It was
reserved for the new testament to make known the doctrine of eternal
punishment.

Is the new testament inspired? I have not time to give many reasons,
but I will give some. In the first place, they tell me the very fact
that the witnesses disagree in minor matters shows that they have not
conspired to tell the same story. Good. And I say in every lawsuit
where four or five witnesses testify, or endeavor to testify, to the
same transaction, it is natural that they should differ on minor
points. Why? Because no two occupy exactly the same position; no two
see exactly alike; no two remember precisely the same, and their
disagreement is due to and accounted for by the imperfection of human
nature, and the fact that they did not all have an equal opportunity to
know. But if you admit or say that the four witnesses were inspired by
an infinite being who did see it all, then they should remember all the
same, because inspiration does not depend on memory.

That brings me to another point. Why were there four gospels? What is
the use of more than one correct account of anything? If you want to
spread it, send copies. No human being has got the ingenu