CONSISTENCY is as admirable in a book as it is in a man. Inconsistency is born either of ignorance or insincerity. In either case, it is a serious blemish in both man and book. There is, of course, a sense in which all growing minds are inconsistent, and proudly so. Manhood is inconsistent with childhood, experience contradicts want of knowledge, and progress is the very antithesis of custom and tradition. But there is no contradiction in dropping an idea which we find to be outworn and untenable, to espouse its very opposite. On the other hand, it would be the most unpardonable inconsistency to try to hold on to an opinion in the face of all the evidence against it. Equally insincere and contradictory would be our conduct if we advocated the new idea without giving up the old.

The Protestants, for instance, profess to believe in private judgment; but they also believe in an infallible revelation. How can an honest mind hold on to both these ideas? What is private judgment good for where there is an infallible guide? But, if private judgment is meant to help us test or interpret infallibility, then private judgment is the judge of infallibility, which is absurd. And when a man uses his private judgment and disagrees with any part of the bible, is he not summarily dropped from the list, and "delivered up to Satan," as the apostle commands? Is that the way to respect the right of private judgment?

The bible is replete with contradictions of this description. A thing is often said and unsaid in the same sentence. An idea is affirmed and denied; a promise made and broken; a doctrine given and withdrawn, in about every chapter of the bible. The most contrary propositions may be proved by texts equally "inspired." Not only does one writer pull down what the other builds up, but the same writer repeatedly demolishes his own work. The author of Exodus, for instance, states as plainly as language will allow that God is invisible; but the same writer assures us that God has been seen by man, and his form and shape discerned. Moses reports the Lord as saying to him, "Thou canst not see my face; for there shall no man see me, and live." * But the same Moses testifies that "the Lord spake unto Moses, face to face, as a man speaketh unto a friend." ** The Apostle John bluntly contradicts this "divine" statement, by another equally "divine," that "No man hath seen God at any time." *** And whereas Jacob swears that he not only saw God but had also a wrestling match with him, which lasted for many hours,**** the Apostle Paul testifies that, not only has no man ever seen God, but no man can ever see him. (v)

It is also stated that Abraham dined with the Lord, and that about seventy of the elders went up the mount and saw the God of Israel. (vi) But more serious than the textual discrepancies, which are numerous, are the moral contradictions, of which the following is but one out of many.

In telling the story of the Tower of Babel, and, describing the state of society immediately after the deluge, the bible paints a pleasing picture of the world after all the bad people in it had been drowned:

And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. *

An ideal state! To educate the races of the world to dwell together as one great family, speaking the same language and cherishing the same hopes—is not that the object of all our efforts? But this was precisely what the God of the bible is represented as not desiring. When Jehovah looked down from heaven and saw the state of harmony in which these people dwelt, and the energy and unanimity with which they labored to erect a tower which in their simplicity they thought would protect future generations from such a deluge as had destroyed their fathers and mothers, he was very much alarmed, and, as the text says, he decided to break up this happy family, and to make strangers and wanderers of its members over the whole earth. Could anything be more inconsistent!

And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.

And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one (that, he did not like), and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. **

This picture of human concord and purpose displeased the being, one of whose supposed titles is "Our Father in Heaven." Nor did he enjoy the sight of a united people, building a city, and a tower to defend themselves against the fury of nature; in other words, progress and science provoked the anger of Jehovah. And so the Lord said:

Let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.

So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. *

What an occupation for a "good" God! Instead of blessing their union and brotherhood, he destroys them. And this is the being whose fatherhood is to be the basis of human brotherhood! Even as Adam was expelled from the garden, "lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for-ever," ** the people dwelling in peace and laboring in unison must be scattered lest they become great and happy. And is this the book which is to teach us human brotherhood?

The brotherhood of man existed; but the bible-God destroyed it. "And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one." Is not that brotherhood? They were not fighting one another; they were not persecuting one another; they were not idle; they were not working at cross-purposes. But after the Lord had sown the seeds of discord, this unity was no more. How different is the bible from what people think it is!

But it would be easier to make a list of the consistencies to be found in the Old Testament than to undertake to call attention even to a limited number of its most glaring inconsistencies. The Old Testament, being miraculous from beginning to end, is but a mass of mutually destructive statements, from the Mosaic commandment, which forbids a man "to trim the corners of his beard," to the saying of the Lord that he himself will turn barber and shave the people:

In the same day shall the Lord shave with a razor that is hired... the head, and the hair of the feet; and it shall also consume the beard. *

A sane word in the bible is as rare as an oasis in a desert. The Old Testament is mostly paradox and platitude.