n who have received revelation are the worst; and
that where the bible goes there go the sword and the fagot. If an
infinite God makes a revelation to me He knows how I will understand
it. If God wrote the bible he knew that no two people would understand
it alike.

When I read the bible I found that God in His infinite wisdom couldn't
control the people He had created and that He had to drown them. If I
had infinite power and couldn't make a people that I could control and
had to drown them, why I'd resign.

Then I read in the bible such cruel things, and I do not believe that
God can be cruel. Such cruelty may make one afraid, but cannot inspire
love. I can't love a god that will inflict pain and sorrow, and I
won't.

The preachers say all unbelievers will go to hell--tidings of great
joy. When I confront them they--say I'm taking away their consolation.
The old bible does not mention hell or heaven. Now God should have
notified Adam and Cain of hell, but He didn't. When He came to drown
all those people He didn't tell a single one that He would drown him.
He talked all about water--nothing about fire. When He came down on
Mount Sinai, and told Moses how to cut out clothes for a priest, He
never said one word on the subject. When God gave Moses the ten
commandments, engraved on stone, there He said not one word about hell.
There was plenty of room on the stone; why did He not add: "If you
don't keep these commandments you will be damned." Through all these
ages, when God was talking all the time, and when every howling prophet
had His ear, not one word did He utter of hell or heaven. For 4,000
years God got along without mentioning those places or even hinting of
them. It seems to me that we ought to have been notified by Him.

(Here the orator recalled many stories from the old bible and subjected
them to keen irony and ridicule. Reciting the story wherein the she
bears came out of the woods and tore to pieces the forty children who
mocked the prophet, he asked: If God did that, what would the devil
have done under the same circumstances? Why; he said, did not God give
a sure cure for leprosy, unless He wanted to have His chosen people to
have that frightful disease?)

Do you believe that God ever told a widow if her brother-in-law refused
to marry her to spit in his face? Do you believe any such nonsense
from a god? I call that courting under difficulties. (Then Colonel
Ingersoll dwelt patheti