was a more heartless, sensual, idolatrous race than the Jews, as Scripture depicts them, God pity that people. We have the authority of Fenelon, Catholic Archbishop of Tours, that the Jews were not "one jot less corrupted" than the heathen, whom the Father, in chapter viii., assures us were worthy of extermination because so wicked! Many things which Scripture records of the Jews would shock the ears of decency: we dare not quote, scarcely refer. But as an example of unalloyed unselfishness, of justice clarified, of sanctity that passeth understanding, refer to Deuteronomy xiv. 21: "Ye shall not eat of anything that dieth of itself; thou shalt give it unto the stranger that is in thy gates, that he may eat it; or thou mayest sell it unto an alien: for thou art an holy people unto the Lord." Why complain of the Jew to-day if he sell you shoddy clothing, when the Lord gave him license to dispose of carrion flesh to the stranger and the alien? I animadvert not the race. It is in many respects noble, and always glorious in its persistence, even against persecution and proscription, which no other nation-for though scattered, it is a nation still-ever endured. The Jew of to-day would not feel himself justified in vending diseased carcasses to the Gentiles, refusing to eat the same himself, because he is of a people "holy unto the Lord." The car of human progress is moving and the Jew is in the front seat. Even when cast out he clings to its sides and endeavors to keep apace. Let us not forget, in the pride of our boasted civilization, that our British ancestors but a few hundred years ago dressed in skins, lived in caves, and, under the auspices of a Druidical priesthood, sacrificed human beings in wicker-baskets.

The past degeneracy of our race is inconceivable; the possibilities of its future incalculable. Men stand aghast with horror at the idea of being the descendants of monkeys. Yet who would not rather be a monkey than a cannibal, or a theo

logical monster, which has imbued its hands "until thicker than themselves with brother's blood," because that brother, in the independence of honest thought, could not offer up conscience on the altar of creed!

It gives us no pleasure to dwell upon the abominations of past time. We must read of them, for they are a part of history; yet ignorance mitigates crime, and we should not expect to find the same high standard of morality among barbarous as among civilized peoples. But when asked to endorse revolting crime, and to justify it with a " Thus saith the Lord," every humane soul, not bound by chains forged in the smithery of superstition, protests.

The Father objects to the statement that God, as represented in the Old Testament, established slavery. We are told there is a distinction between "permit" and "establish." True, but was not Jehovah, when he issued his mandates regarding slavery, the ruler of the Jewish people? Suppose the Czar of Russia should issue a ukase, saying to his people, "You shall not enslave your, brethren proper, but of the Cossacks and Polanders you may buy both bondmen and bondmaids-hold them for life, and leave them an inheritance for your children." Would you not say the Czar had established slavery in his dominions? A decree of permission which culminates in practical adoption by the people to whom it is addressed is an establishment.

The aggressive wars of the Jews, we are told, were not wars of annihilation but of extermination, and that "exterminate, from ex and terminus, means to drive from the borders, to expel, to drive out," and that "this the Jews did to the Canaanites just as we are exterminating the Indians from this continent."

In confidence, Father (I will not whisper it to the illiterate; will not open the eyes of your blind, nor the ears of your

deaf; between ourselves), may not the word signify something more than to "expel, to drive out?" We both know, you a good and I a poor Latin scholar, that exterminate is composed of the two Latin words, ex, from, and terminus, limit. We also know that words, like the seasons, change. Their meaning to-day may not be their meaning to-morrow. So gradual is that change that the transition may not be noted; yet, when it comes in its fullness, all must recognize it. Take the word prevent as an example. It is derived from or compounded of pre, before, and venio, to go, meaning, literally, to "go before;" and such was the sense in which it was originally used.

What, in popular acceptance, does it now mean? Not to go before, but to obstruct, to hinder. Take, as an instance, the passage of Scripture, I Thessalonians iv., part of verses 15, 16, 17: "We which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord, shall not prevent them which are asleep . . . . the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we, which are alive and remain, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air." According to the present meaning of the word "prevent" Scripture would declare that at the resurrection of the dead there will be an ignoble strife between the righteous living and the righteous dead; that the former will try to hinder the latter from joining the redeemed throng in its ascension to meet their common Lord.

But read the word according to its original meaning and as understood when King James' translation was made, and all is light. "Those who are alive shall not go before those who are dead, but shall be caught up together with them in the air," etc. So of exterminate. Its most general meaning now is, to extirpate, to literally destroy. But in the clear light of history, what little need have we for lexicons! Moses should have understood the commands of him with whom he was in

constant communication. (Numbers xxi. 3.) "And the Lord hearkened unto the voice of Israel and delivered up the Canaanites; and they utterly destroyed them and their cities." (Numbers xxxi. 17.) "Now, therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him." (Deut. ii. 34.) "And we took all his cities at that time, and utterly destroyed the men, and the women, and the little ones of every city: we left none to remain.”

In the light of these passages—in the bright lexicon of Jewish mercy, what does extermination mean?

Much more of kindred import could be quoted, but my soul sickens and I turn away.

The Indians, cruel as they are, have been maltreated by us, and our treatment of them is no excuse for Jewish atrocities. The laws of dynamics will prevail, but should not countervail the laws of morality. William Penn, the noble old Quaker, bartered with the Indians, not in deception but in honesty; not by deceiving them as to the difference between ter square miles and ten miles square, as was done with the Cornplanter tribe, but by fair, open dealing, which has made his name the synonym of honesty.

The bloody tomahawk and scalping-knife were never raised against the colonies he planted on territory honestly bought and faithfully paid for. "Lo! the poor Indian," in his untutored, savage state, knows justice from wrong, knows contract from robbery. Would that the Lord's anointed realized so fully those eternal laws which make every man a brother and every woman a sister.

CHAPTER XVI.

REPLY TO CHAPTER XV.

Argument and Assumption-Slavery-Polygamy-Legislation of the Roman Catholic Church Against Slavery-Father Lambert to Make a "Point" Splits a Sentence in Two and Changes Punctuation-Misquotations by the FatherSlavery in Itself, is it Sinful?-Blanchard and Rice's Debate on SlaveryMiracles.

A WAR of words is a sham battle. As is said by boys at marble play, "Let us knuckle down tight." Idea should combat idea in generous emulation of candor as well as of logical force. If honest in our opinion, let us not fear the cohorts of error, though their name be legion. "I will go to Worms," said Luther, "though the devils be thicker than the tiles on the houses." It was Fred Douglass, I think, who said: "God and one always make a majority." Let not the lovers of truth be troubled. Hell yawns not for honest souls. Why do I write that which will displease the many, and be, in part, unsavory to the few? Do I not know that, if fallacious in my reasoning, some able pen will poise my argument on its point, and pile it as rubbish before my eyes? And how complacently, gratefully, would I survey the wreck! for, in the triumph of truth, we may well glory in our own defeat.

Ingersoll." In this age of fact and demonstration it is refreshing to find a man who believes so thoroughly in the monstrous, the miraculous, the impossible and immoral."

Lambert." Here you assume to determine what is monstrous, miraculous, impossible and immoral. It is refreshing