I refuse to accept the Bible as a moral guide because it sanctions human sacrifices.

“No devoted thing, that a man shall devote unto the Lord of all that he hath, both of man and beast, and of the field of his possession, shall be sold or redeemed; every devoted thing is most holy unto the Lord. None devoted, which shall be devoted of men, shall be redeemed; but shall surely be put to death” (Lev. xxvii, 28, 29).

God commands Abraham to sacrifice his son:

“Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering” (Gen. xxii, 2).

The order was countermanded, but the perusal of this text has driven thousands to insanity and murder.

That a famine may cease, David sacrifices the sons of Saul:

“Wherefore David said unto the Gibeonites, What shall I do for you? and wherewith shall I make the atonement, that ye may bless the inheritance of the Lord?... And they answered the king, The man that consumed us and devised against us.... Let seven men of his sons be delivered unto us, and we will hang them up unto the Lord.... And the king said, I will give them. And he delivered them unto the hands of the Gibeonites, and they hanged them in the hill before the Lord; and they fell all seven together, and were put to death in the days of the harvest” (2 Sam. xxi).

The sacrifice, we are told, was accepted, and the famine ceased.

Five of these innocent victims, if the Bible be true, were the sons of Michal, David’s own wife. Two were the sons of Rizpah. Throughout that long summer—from April till October—in the heat and glare of the day and the chill and darkness of the night, Rizpah, broken-hearted, tenderly watches and protects the decaying bodies of her dead sons and relatives.

“And Rizpah the daughter of Aiah took sackcloth, and spread it for her upon the rock, from the beginning of harvest until water dropped upon them out of heaven, and suffered neither the birds of the air to rest on them by day, nor the beasts of the field by night.”

When I dwell on this dark tragedy, and contrast the love and devotion of this agonized and despairing Hebrew mother with the malignant hatred and heartless cruelty of this Bible God and his despicable agent, humanity rises to the highest heaven and divinity sinks to the lowest hell.

The pathetic story of Jephthah’s daughter is familiar to all. Jephthah is a warrior, and makes a vow that if he is permitted to conquer the children of Ammon, upon his return the first that meets him at the door will be offered up for a burnt offering unto the Lord. He is successful; the Lord permits him to defeat the children of Ammon. Upon his return the first to meet him is his daughter, an only child. He tells her of his vow. She prays for two brief months to live. Her prayer is granted, and at the expiration of this time, the Bible tells us that Jephthah “did with her according to the vow which he had vowed” (Jud. xi, 26–40).

Describing the fulfilment of this terrible vow, Dr. Oort says:

“This victim, crowned with flowers, was led round the altar with music and song in honor of Yahweh. She met her cruel fate without shrinking. But who shall say how sick at heart her father was when he struck that fatal blow with his own hand and saw the blood of his darling child poured out upon the sacred stone, while her body was burned upon the altar?” (Bible for Learners, Vol. I., p. 408.)

“In that frightful sacrifice that he performed—breaking the holiest domestic ties—we do but see the disastrous results of a mistaken faith” (Ibid., p. 411).

The celebrated Jewish commentator, Dr. Kalisch, while endeavoring to palliate as far as possible the crimes of his people, admits that human sacrifices were not uncommon among them:

“The fact stands indisputable that human sacrifices offered to Jehovah were possible among the Hebrews long after the time of Moses, without meeting a check or censure from the teachers and leaders of the nation” (Leviticus, Part I., p. 385).

“One instance like that of Jephthah not only justifies, but necessitates, the influence of a general custom. Pious men slaughtered human victims, not to Moloch, nor to any other foreign deity, but to the national God, Jehovah” (Ibid., p. 390).

Jules Soury says: “Nothing is better established than the existence of human sacrifices among the Hebrews in honor of Iahveh, and that down to the time of Josiah, perhaps even until the return from the Babylonish captivity” (Religion of Israel, p. 46).

The Church, having received the benefits of a sacrificed God, deems human sacrifices no longer necessary. But what can be said of the Church as a whole cannot be said of all its individual members. Scarcely a year passes without the sacrifice of human beings by those who believe the Bible to be inspired, and who believe that what was right three thousand years ago is right to-day.

The sacrifice of little Ben Smith at Los Angeles, in 1882, is still remembered by some. His father was converted at a Methodist revival. He became very religious. The press dispatches stated that “for several months he devoted his time to the study of the Bible until he not only convinced himself that he ought to make a human sacrifice, but brought his wife and their only child, a boy of thirteen, to acquiesce, in his views.” I quote from the mother’s testimony:

“When he talked to me and persuaded me that a good wife ought to think as her husband did, I got so as to take whatever he said as the truth. He made us fast, and when Ben asked him if God had ordered us to starve he said yes. When he announced that the boy must be killed we both remonstrated, but finally thought it was all right. On the day appointed for the ceremony he called Ben out of the house and told him he had to die for our savior. The little fellow knelt down and I got on my knees by his side; John raised the knife, looked hard into the boy’s face, and then drove the knife into his breast.”

Here the mother was overcome with grief. Regaining her composure, she continued: “I am always thinking of Ben; I am always hearing him in the night asking to be brought in and laid on his bed, and begging for a little water before he died.”

Let me recall another half-forgotten scene. In a quiet village of New England live a pair whom nature meant for good, kind citizens. But they have become infatuated with the Bible. They believe it to be infallible. Day after day they pore over its pages. They dwell with especial interest upon the story of Abraham and Isaac, until at last they become impressed with the belief that they, too, are called upon to offer up their child. The fatal hour arrives. Nerved for the cruel deed, they approach the bedside of their child, a sweet-faced, curly-haired girl of four. How placidly she rests! Folded upon her breast are dimpled hands, white as the winter snow; curtained in slumber are eyes as mild as the summer sky. How beautiful! How pure! We would risk our lives to save that pretty thing from harm. How dear, then, must she be to that father and that mother! She is their idol. But that idol is about to be sacrificed upon the altar of superstition. There they stand—the mother with a lamp in her hand, the father with a knife. They gaze for a moment upon their sleeping victim. Then the father lifts his arm and plunges the knife into the heart of his child! A quiver—the blue eyes open, and cast a reproachful look upon the parent. The little lips exclaim, “O papa!” and the sacrifice is made!

You may say these people were insane. Aye, but what made them insane? And what, more than almost any other cause, is filling our asylums with these unfortunate people? The vain attempt to reconcile with reason the irreconcilable teachings of the Bible.

I refuse to accept the Bible as a moral guide because it teaches the horrible custom of cannibalism.

“The fathers shall eat the sons in the midst of thee, and the sons shall eat their fathers” (Ezek. v, 10).

“And ye shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters shall ye eat” (Lev. xxvi, 29).

“And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they shall eat every one the flesh of his friend” (Jer. xix, 9).

“And thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters.... So that the man that is tender among you, and very delicate, his eye shall be evil toward his brother, and toward the wife of his bosom, and toward the remnant of his children which he shall leave; so that he will not give to any of them the flesh of his children whom he shall eat.... The tender and delicate woman among you, which would not adventure to set the sole of her foot upon the ground for delicateness and tenderness, her eye shall be evil toward the husband of her bosom, and toward her son, and toward her daughter, ... for she shall eat them” (Deut. xxviii, 53–57).

“The hands of the pitiful women have sodden [boiled] their own children” (Lam. iv, 10).

“And the king said unto her, What aileth thee? And she answered, This woman said unto me, Give thy son that we may eat him to-day, and we will eat my son to-morrow. So we boiled my son, and did eat him. And I said unto her on the next day, Give thy son that we may eat him; and she hath hid her son” (2 Kings vi, 28, 29).

You will say that these were punishments inflicted upon these people for their sins. And you will have us believe that these punishments were just. Strange justice! a merciful God compelling a starving mother to kill and devour her own child!

“Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, ye have no life in you” (John vi, 53).

The church perpetuates the idea, if not the practice, of cannibalism. The Christian takes a piece of bread, and tries to make himself and the world believe that he is eating the body of Christ; he takes a sup of wine, and says, “This is Christ’s blood.” Your sacramental feast points to the time when savage priests gathered around the festal board and supped on human flesh and blood.

Primitive Christians, many of them, were guilty of cannibalism. In their AgapÆ they were accustomed to kill and eat an infant. Dr. Cave in his “Primitive Christianity” (Part III., ch. i) says:

“Epiphanius reports that the Gnostics (a sect of primitive Christians) at their meetings were wont to take an infant begotten in their promiscuous mixtures, and, beating it in a mortar, to season it with honey and pepper and some other spices and perfumes to make it palatable, and then like swine or dogs to devour it, and then to conclude all with prayer.”

Meredith, in “The Prophet of Nazareth,” says:

“So well known were those horrid vices to be carried on by Christians in their nocturnal and secret assemblies, and so certain it was thought that every one who was a Christian participated in them, that for a person to be known to be a Christian was thought a strong presumptive proof that he was guilty of these offenses.... It would appear, however, that, owing to the extreme measures taken against them by the Romans, both in Italy and in all the provinces, the Christians, by degrees, were forced to abandon entirely in their AgapÆ infant murders, together with every species of obscenity, retaining, nevertheless, some of them, such as the kiss of charity, and the bread and wine, which they contended was transubstantiated into real flesh and blood.”

In the remote districts of Christian Russia, where the rays of our civilization have not yet penetrated the darkness of theology, where Bible morals are still supreme, we are told that even at the present time a more terribly real form attaches to this eucharistic ceremony. From Harper’s Weekly I quote the following:

“We hear of horrid sects at present in Russia, practicing cannibal and human sacrifices with rites almost more devilish than any recorded in history. ‘The communism of the flesh of the Lamb’ and ‘the communism of the blood of the Lamb’ really seem to have been invented by the lowest demons of the bottomless pit. The subject is too revolting to be pursued in detail; it is enough to say that an infant seven days old is bandaged over the eyes, stretched over a dish, and a silver spoon thrust into the side so as to pierce the heart. The elect suck the child’s blood—that is ‘the blood of the Lamb!’ The body is left to dry up in another dish full of sage, then crushed into powder and eaten—that is ‘the flesh of the Lamb!’”

I refuse to accept the Bible as a moral guide because it recognizes as a verity the delusion of witchcraft and punishes with death its victims.

The God that inspired the account of Saul’s interview with the witch of Endor was as thorough a believer in witchcraft as the most superstitious crone of the Middle Ages.

Manasseh “used enchantments, and used witchcraft, and dealt with a familiar spirit, and with wizards” (2 Chron. xxxiii, 6).

Isaiah speaks of “wizards that peep and mutter” (Isa. viii, 19).

Samuel (1 Sam, xv, 23) and Micah (v, 12) and Nahum (iii, 4) and Paul (Gal. v, 20) all admit the reality of witchcraft.

The decline in the belief of wizards and witches denotes a decline of faith in the Bible. Until a very recent period, those who professed to believe in the divinity of the Bible also professed to believe in the reality of witchcraft. “Giving up witchcraft,” says John Wesley, “is, in effect, giving up the Bible” (Journal, 1768).

Sir William Blackstone says: “To deny the possibility—nay, actual existence—of witchcraft and sorcery is at once flatly to contradict the revealed word of God in various passages both of the Old and New Testaments.”

Sir Matthew Hale says: “The Bible leaves no doubt as to the reality of witchcraft and the duty of putting its subjects to death.”

“I should have no compassion on these witches.” said Luther; “I would burn them all” (Table Talk).

“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” (Ex. xxii, 18).

“A man also or a woman that hath a familial spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death” (Lev. xx, 27).

Oh, that I could bring to view the suffering and death these texts have caused! Millions have died because of them. One thousand were burned at Como in one year; 800 were burned at WÜrzburg in one year; 500 perished at Geneva in three months; 80 were burned in a single village of Savoy; nine women were burned in a single fire at Leith; sixty were hanged at Suffolk; 3,000 were legally executed during one session of Parliament, while thousands more were put to death by mobs; Remy, a Christian judge, executed 800; 600 were burned by one bishop at Bamburg; Boguet burned 600 at St. Cloud; thousands were put to death by the Lutherans of Norway and Sweden; Catholic Spain butchered thousands; Presbyterians were responsible for the death of 4,000 in Scotland; 50,000 were sentenced to death during the reign of Francis I.; 7,000 died at Treves; the number killed 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 shall not suffer a witch to live,” was the torch that kindled them.

Four hundred were burned at Toulouse in one day. Think of it! Four hundred women—guilty of no crime, save that which exists in the diseased imaginations of their accusers—four hundred mothers, wives, and daughters, taken out upon the public square, chained to posts, the fagots piled around them, and burned to death! See them writhing in the flames—listen to their piteous shrieks—four hundred voices raised in one wild chorus of agony! And all because the Bible says, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”

Only a few years ago, in the province of Novgorod, Russia, a woman was burnt for witchcraft. Agrafena was a soldier’s widow, and possessed of more than ordinary gifts of mind. But ignorance and superstition prevailed around her. Every strange occurrence, every disease that could not be accounted for, was the result of witchcraft. One day a farmer’s daughter was seized with some violent disease, and in her paroxysms of pain she chanced to breathe the name of Agrafena. That was enough; Agrafena was a witch. A mob was raised and led to the widow’s dwelling. They called her to the door, parleyed with her a moment, then thrust her back into the house, fastened its doors, and set it on fire. And while it was burning, this mob, led by Christian priests, stood around it, singing praises to God—their strains blended with the shrieks of this dying woman—dying because the Bible says, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”

And in our own America the blighting influence of this delusion and this brutal statute has been felt. With the soil of our Republic is mingled the dust of murdered women—murdered because the Bible says, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”