can inspire purity like that of the great saints
and afford arguments in favor of polygamy. The Bible is the text book
of ironclad Calvinism and sunny Universalism. It makes the Quaker
quiet and the Millerite crazy. It inspired the Union soldier to live
and grandly die for the right, and Stonewall Jackson to live nobly and
die grandly for the wrong."

Q. But, Mr. Collyer, do you really think that a book with as many
passages in favor of wrong as right, is inspired? A. I look upon the
Old Testament as a rotting tree. When it falls it will fertilize a
bank of violets.

Q. Do you believe that God upheld slavery and polygamy? Do you
believe that He ordered the killing of babes and the violation of
maidens? A. "There is three-fold inspiration in the Bible, the first
peerless and perfect, the Word of God to man;--the second simply and
purely human, and then below this again, there is an inspiration born
of an evil heart, ruthless and savage there and then as anything well
can be. A three-fold inspiration, of Heaven first, then of the Earth,
and then of Hell, all in the same book, all sometimes in the same
chapter, and then, besides, a great many things that need no
inspiration."

Q. Then, after all, you do not pretend that the Scriptures are really
inspired? A. "The Scriptures make no such claim for themselves as the
Church make's for them. They leave me free to say this is false, or
this is true. The truth even within the Bible dies and lives, makes on
this side and loses on that."

Q. What do you say to the last verse in the Bible, where a curse is
threatened to any man who takes from or adds to the book? A. "I have
but one answer to this question, and it is: Let who will have written
this, I can not for an instant believe that it was written by a divine
inspiration. Such dogmas and threats as these are not of God, but of
man, and not of any man of a free spirit and heart eager for the truth,
but a narrow man who would cripple and confine the human soul in its
quest after the whole truth of God, and back those who have done the
shameful things in the name of the Most High."

Q. Do you not regard such talk as slang?

(Supposed) Answer. If an infidel had said that the writer of
Revelations was narrow and bigoted, I might have denounced his
discourse as "slang," but I think that Unitarian ministers can do so
with the greatest propriety.

Q. Do you believe in the stories of the Bible, about Jael,