wither it, nor custom stale; it's infinite variety.

The following Comic Bible Sketches, which will be succeeded in due course by others, comprise all those worth preserving that appeared in the Freethinker before its editor, proprietor and publisher were imprisoned, including the drawings they were prosecuted for by that pious guinea: pig, Sir Henry Tyler, who had his dirty fingers severely rapped by Lord Coleridge, after spending several hundred pounds of somebody's money in an unsuccessful Blasphemy prosecution, in order to patch up his threadbare reputation, and perhaps also with a faint hope of cheating the Almighty into reserving him a front-seat ticket for the dress-circle in heaven.

The French Comic Bible prints under each illustration a few crisp lines of satiric narrative. This plan has its advantages; it allows, for instance, the writer's pen to curvet as well as the artist's pencil. But it is after all less effective than the plan we have adopted. We merely give each picture a comprehensive and striking title, and print beneath it the Bible text which is illustrated. By this means the satire is greatly heightened. Not even the sentences of a Voltaire could so illuminate and emphasise the grotesqueness of each topic as this juxtaposition of the solemnly absurd Scripture with the gaily absurd illustration.

The same spirit has animated us in designing the pictures. Our object has been to take the Bible text always as our basis, to include no feature which is contradicted by it, and to introduce as many comicalities and anachronisms as possible consistently with this rule. We are therefore able to defy criticism. Bibliolators may vituperate us, persecute us, or imprison us, but they cannot refute us.. We can safely challenge them to prove that a single incident happened otherwise than we have depicted it. We can candidly say to them—"The thing must have happened in some way, as to which the Divine Word is silent; this is our view,—What is yours?" And we humbly submit that our speculations are as valid as our neighbors'. Nothing but the insanest bigotry in favor of their own conjectures could lead them to quarrel with us for expounding ours. If they can shame us with explicit disproofs from Holy Writ, let them do so; but what right have they to set up their carnal imaginings and uninspired theories as the ultimate criteria of truth?

Those who object to any employment of satire on "sacred" subjects should not go beyond the Preface of this book. It is not for them, nor are they for it; and they are warned in the hall of what they must expect in the various chambers. But if they neglect the warning they should take the responsibility. It will be simply indecent if they turn round afterwards and assail us with unmerited abuse.

For the sake of those who proceed in a spirit of impartial candor and honest inquiry, we beg to offer a little further explanation.

We honestly admit that our purpose is to discredit the Bible as the infallible word of God. Believing as we do, with Voltaire, that despotism can never be abolished without destroying the dogmas on which it rests, and that the Bible is the grand source and sanction of them all, we are profoundly anxious to expose its pretentions. The educated classes already see through them, and the upper classes credit them just as little, although they dare not openly profess a scepticism which would imperil their privileges. But the multitude are still left to the manipulation of priests, credulous victims of the Black Army everywhere arrayed against freedom and progress. It is to liberate these from thraldom that we labor, sacrifice and suffer. Without being indifferent to what the world calls success, we acknowledge the sovereignty of loftier aims. Compared with the advancement of Freethought everything else is to us of trivial moment. It may interest, and perhaps surprise, some to learn that for the famous Christmas Number of the Freethinker which was successfully prosecuted, the editor received absolutely nothing for his work