of the human race. Mind you! It is mentioned not in the sense that the life the word signifies should be avoided as abhorrent, but it is mentioned in connection with men and women of the Bible after whom fond parents consider it a great honor to name their sons and daughters. I am going to mention this word in the course of this book, as I am sure that if the people were acquainted with what the Bible actually contains they would discard it completely as being utterly unfit for cultural reading.

As a piece of fiction, the Bible ranks, when truthfully weighed, far beneath the great entrancing stories of the French novelists. By comparison with the celebrated masterpieces of erotic composition, the Bible is lacking in that charm and delicacy of expression and is utterly void in its moral conclusion, which so distinguishes this kind of literature. Standards and appreciations are, in a great measure, a matter of personal preference and opinion, and I will leave, therefore, after you have read this book, the question of the Bible's worth to your own judgment.

There have been many instances when Robert G. Ingersoll offered one hundred dollars in gold to any preacher who would read certain parts of

the Bible to his congregation, but so far as I know no clergyman ever came forward to claim the money. There is a saying to the effect that "what cannot be spoken, may be sung," so in the course of this book I will mention some of those parts to you.

As long as the Bible is permitted to be read in the home, and the government sanctions it by permitting it to be sent through the mail, I do not think I will trespass much upon indiscretion when I quote from its chapters.

I wish this borne in mind: it is not what I say about the stories in the Bible that makes them so offensive; it is the stories themselves, steeped in all the sordidness of vulgarity, that makes them so shocking and harmful. It is the example of the stories that we are concerned with. They lack the moral viewpoint we want to instill and the power to elevate and uplift. It is what the Bible does not tell in its relation to morality that is of so much importance.

I sincerely trust that anyone who reads this book will never again abuse the word "Holy" in referring to the Bible. Never again should the word "good" be applied to the Bible, which has been found to be so distinctly bad and vulgar.

As to making mention that it is divine, all I can say is: I have only sympathy for the deluded, the superstitious and the insane. I am in perfect accord with Havelock Ellis, who claims that were the treatment of the insane in early Biblical times on the same scientific plane that it is to-day, the Bible would never have been written.

It is a conspicious fact that the Bible not only does not contain a moral guide, but it does not contain even the words "moral" and "morality."

Surely its pages bespeak the reason why. The writers of the Bible had little conception of what was moral, or right; and as to the meaning and understanding of morality they were pitifully ignorant. The writers of the Bible had slight concern for the principles of morality. They were more concerned with rape, murder, robbery, slavery, licentiousness, brutal ignorance and degrading superstition.

Some may think, in the reading of this book, that I have picked out the so-called immoral parts of the Bible to lower its estimation in the minds of the people.

Such a conclusion is an admission of the fact, and of the Bible's guilt!

You will be able to determine for yourself, by

consulting the Bible, whether or not I am telling the truth.

The first story from the Bible that contains subject matter for my book appears just at the beginning of Biblical history, after "God" had destroyed the world and had made Noah the Commander-in-Chief of all living things. It is just after the success of the Flood that our first story begins, and let us see what a race of perfect, moral people God created, since the first lot was not satisfactory.

It is regrettable that we have no record of the history of the people God destroyed, as I believe their wickedness would have made a fine contrast to those the Lord preserved. But this is pardonable, for the story of Noah, the Ark, and the Flood is now considered, even by high church dignitaries, to have been a monstrous "fish story." It will not be necessary to turn many pages to get to the stories of the Bible, which, by reading, will bring a blush of shame to your cheeks, despite the fact that they will be taken from the book that has so long been regarded and reverenced and legally protected as the "Holy Scriptures."

ABRAM AND SARAI.*

The most sacred relation of life is the devotion, the integrity, and the loyalty of a man and a woman. Without this relationship, without the mutual pledge and keeping of a sacred faith with each other, there would be nothing in life to warrant its puny existence. Anything that tends to strengthen this tie of love, that makes for a more happy union and sacred trust, is a force of uplift, of advancement, of progress, and of happiness. Anything that undermines this relationship, that tends to break its bonds, that puts a commercial price upon its devotion is not only harmful, but belongs to the baser things of life which civilization abhors as a plague. For after all, when the sum total of life has been thoroughly analyzed, it is as Robert Burns would say:

“To build a happy fire-side clime for weans and wife,
Is the true pathos and sublime of human life."

*The Bible used as reference in this work is the King James version, published by the American Bible Society. "Its sole object," says the printed statement of the society, "is to encourage