s; that is the will of
God. Will you tell me that any God ever commanded such infamy? Kill
the men and the women, and the young men and the babes! "What shall we
do with the maidens?" "Give them to the rabble murderers!" Do you
believe that God ever allowed the roses of love and the violets of
modesty that shed their perfume in the heart of a maiden to be trampled
beneath the brutal feet of lust? If there is any God, I pray Him to
write in the book of eternal remembrance opposite to my name, that I
denied that lie.

Whenever a woman reads a Bible and comes to that passage, she ought to
throw the book from her in contempt and scorn. Do you tell me that any
decent god would do that? What would the devil have done under the
same circumstances? Just think of it, and yet that is the God that we
want to get into the Constitution. That is the God we teach our
children about so that they will be sweet and tender, amiable and kind!
That monster--that fiend--I guess the Bible is not inspired about
religious liberty, nor about war.

Then, if it is not inspired about these things, may be it is inspired
about slavery. God tells the Jews to buy up the children of the
heathen round about and they should be servants for them. What is a
"servant?" If they struck a "servant" and he died immediately,
punishment was to follow; but if the injured man should linger a while,
there was no punishment, because the servant represented their money!
Do you believe that it is right--that God made one man to work for
another and to receive pay in rations? Do you believe God said that a
whip on the naked back was the legal tender for labor performed? Is it
possible that the real God ever gave such infamous, blood-thirsty laws?
What more does He say? When the time of a married slave expired, he
could not take his wife and children with him. Then if the slave did
not wish to desert his family, he had his ears pierced with an awl, and
became his master's property forever. Do you believe that God ever
turned the dimpled cheeks of little children into iron chains to hold a
man in slavery? Do you know that a God like that would not make a
respectable devil? I want none of his mercy. I want no part and no
lot in the heaven of such a God. I will go to perdition, where there
is human sympathy. The only voice we have ever had from either of
those other worlds came from hell. There was a rich man who prayed his
brothers to attend to Lazar