ld of faith, but of
unbelief--the result of free thought.

What man who ever thinks, can believe that blood can appease God? And
yet our entire system of religion is based on that belief. The Jews
pacified Jehovah with the blood of animals, and according to the
christian system, the blood of Jesus softened the heart of God a
little, and rendered possible the salvation of a fortunate few.

It is hard to conceive how any sane man can read the bible and still
believe in the doctrine of inspiration.

The bible was originally written in the Hebrew language, and the Hebrew
language at that time had no vowels in writing. It was written entirely
with consonants, and without being divided into chapters and verses,
and there was no system of punctuation whatever. After you go home
to-night write an English sentence or two with only consonants close
together, and you will find that it will take twice as much inspiration
to read it as it did to write it.

The real bible is not the result of inspired men, nor prophets, nor
evangelists, nor christs. The real bible has not been written, but is
being written. Every man who finds a fact adds a word to this great
book.

The bad passages in the bible are not inspired. No god ever ordered a
soldier to sheathe his sword in the breast of a mother. No god ever
ordered a warrior to butcher a smiling, prattling babe. No god ever
upheld tyranny. No god ever said, be subject to the powers that be. No
god endeavored to make man a slave and woman a beast of burden. There
are thousands of good passages in the bible. Many of them are true.
There are in it wise laws, good customs, some lofty and splendid
things. And I do not care whether they are inspired or not, so they are
true. But what I do insist upon is that the bad is not inspired.

There is no hope for you. It is just as bad to deny hell as it is to
deny heaven. Prof. Swing says the bible is a poem. Dr. Ryder says it is
a picture. The Garden of Eden is pictorial; a pictorial snake and a
pictorial woman, I suppose, and a pictorial man, and may be it was a
pictorial sin. And only a pictorial atonement!

Man must learn to rely on himself. Reading bibles will not protect him
from the blasts of winter, but houses, fire and clothing will. To
prevent famine one plow is worth a million sermons, and even patent
medicines will cure more diseases than all the prayers uttered since
the beginning of the world.

Ingersoll's Lecture on V