d been told that if he ate the apples he would be
turned into a meridian of longitude that threat would have meant just as
much as the other one. The watery intellect that invented that notion
could be depended on to go on and decree that all of Adam's descendants
down to the latest day should be punished for that nursery trespass in
the beginning.

"There is a curious poverty of invention in Bibles. Most of the great
races each have one, and they all show this striking defect. Each
pretends to originality, without possessing any. Each of them borrows
from the other, confiscates old stage properties, puts them forth as
fresh and new inspirations from on high. We borrowed the Golden Rule
from Confucius, after it had seen service for centuries, and copyrighted
it without a blush. We went back to Babylon for the Deluge, and are as
proud of it and as satisfied with it as if it had been worth the trouble;
whereas we know now that Noah's flood never happened, and couldn't have
happened--not in that way. The flood is a favorite with Bible-makers.
Another favorite with the founders of religions is the Immaculate
Conception. It had been worn threadbare; but we adopted it as a new
idea. It was old in Egypt several thousand years before Christ was born.
The Hindus prized it ages ago. The Egyptians adopted it even for some of
their kings. The Romans borrowed the idea from Greece. We got it
straight from heaven by way of Rome. We are still charmed with it."

He would continue in this strain, rising occasionally and walking about
the room. Once, considering the character of God--the Bible God-he said:

"We haven't been satisfied with God's character as it is given in the Old
Testament; we have amended it. We have called Him a God of mercy and
love and morals. He didn't have a single one of those qualities in the
beginning. He didn't hesitate to send the plagues on Egypt, the most
fiendish punishments that could be devised--not for the king, but for his
innocent subjects, the women and the little children, and then only to
exhibit His power just to show off--and He kept hardening Pharaoh's heart
so that He could send some further ingenuity of torture, new rivers of
blood, and swarms of vermin and new pestilences, merely to exhibit
samples of His workmanship. Now and then, during the forty years'
wandering, Moses persuaded Him to be a little more lenient with the
Israelites, which would show that Moses was the better character of the