in Paris in a few months is declared to have been "almost
infinite." Dr. Sprenger places the total number of executions
for witchcraft in Europe at _nine millions_. For centuries
witch fires burned in nearly every town of Europe, and this
Bible text, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," was the
torch that kindled them.

Count up the terrible losses in the many religious wars of the world,
add in the massacres, the martyrdoms, the tortures for religion's
sake; put to the sum the long tale of witchcraft murders; remember what
slavery has been; and then ask yourselves whether the Book of Books
deserves all the eulogy that has been laid upon it.

I believe that to-day all manner of evil passions are fostered, and
all the finer motions of the human spirit are retarded, by the habit of
reading those savage old books of the Jews as the word of God.

I do not think the Bible, in its present form, is a fit book to place
in the hands of children, and it certainly is not a fit book to send out
for the "salvation" of savage and ignorant people.

OUR HEAVENLY FATHER

The Rev. T. Rhondda Williams, in _Shall We Understand the Bible?_ shows
very clearly the gradual evolution of the idea of God amongst the Jews
from a lower to a higher conception.

Having dealt with the lower conception, let us now consider the higher.

The highest conception of God is supposed to be the Christian conception
of God as a Heavenly Father. This conception credits the Supreme Being
with supernal tenderness and mercy--"God is Love." That is a very
lofty, poetical, and gratifying conception, but it is open to one fatal
objection--it is not true.

For this Heavenly Father, whose nature is Love, is also the All-knowing
and All-powerful Creator of the world.

Being All-powerful and All-knowing, He has power, and had always power,
to create any kind of world He chose. Being a God of Love, He would not
choose to create a world in which hate and pain should have a place.

But there is evil in the world. There has been always evil in the world.
Why did a good and loving God allow evil to enter the world? Being
All-Powerful and All-knowing, He could have excluded evil. Being good,
He would hate evil. Being a God of Love He would wish to exclude evil.
Why, then, did He permit evil to enter?

The world is full of sorrow, of pain, of hatred and crime, and strife
and war. All life is a perpetual deadly struggle for exis