profitable to manufacture Gospels that everybody tried his hand at it? I cannot get away from the tremendous fact that by the admission of the churches themselves, there were a great number of apocryphal Gospels thrown upon the religious market as soon as Christianity became well established in Europe. What made lying so popular and profitable all at once? If it is true, and it is, that our four Gospels had to be voted upon from among a heap of other manuscripts; and if it is true, as one Church father reports, that a great number of manuscripts were placed under a table, and that prayers were then offered to induce the genuine Gospels to jump upon the table, and that four of them did so, while the rest, failing to jump upon the table, were disowned; and if it is also true, and we know it is, that some of the Christian fathers claimed that only four Gospels could be genuine because the earth has four corners, and four winds. If all this is true—then, speaking as a student of history, whether it unsettles you or not, I am constrained to say that this Oriental religion, as soon as it set foot in Europe, lifted both superstition and lying to the dignity of a vocation.

But when we come to the four Gospels themselves, pronounced to be canonical, do you know, my hearers, that there are upwards of 150,000 different readings of these same Gospels? That is to say, the same passages read one way in one manuscript, and another, in another, while they may be absent altogether from a third, etc. In view of all these facts, reflect upon the intelligence of the man who, Sunday after Sunday, holds up the Gospels as the infallible word of God. He does so because he is speaking by the creed, to which he has sworn allegiance for the rest of his life. One hundred and fifty thousand various readings of the New Testament! And think of the centuries of bloodshed and controversy over these various readings!

Open, if you please, your New Testaments and read the seventh verse of the fifth chapter of the first epistle of John, then look for the same verse in the Revised Version, and you will not find it there. After being regarded as the word of God for two thousand years, it has been expurgated. Today, according to one Bible (the King James Version), this passage is inspired; according to another Bible (the Revised Version), it is an imposture. Let me quote the text:

"For there are three that bear record in Heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one."

What better proof of the Trinity do we need? On black and white, in the Bible, John, the Apostle, declares by the power of the Holy Ghost, that there are three in heaven, gives their names, and adds that these three are one.

Some lying scribe, some crabbed sectarian, some unconscionable copyist, bribed by his party, must have invented this text, which, for twenty centuries, has been worshiped as the word of God. Wicked sceptics, two thousand years ago, denounced the clumsy imposture, but they were silenced by the halter and the sword. It has taken the Christian Church nearly two thousand years to discover that the sceptics were right. It has taken the church two thousand years of evolution in honesty and intelligence to throw out this spurious text. It has taken the church, claiming to be under the guidance of the Spirit of God, twenty hundred years in which to acquire the courage and love of truth of the wicked sceptics who first called attention to this lie hiding behind an apostle's name. Reflect upon this! After using every means, even the most cruel, to force this Trinitarian text upon the world, the Revised Version blushes with shame to retain it any longer.

It would be unnecessary to multiply illustrations, but let my readers also consult the words in the margin of the last chapter of the Gospel of Mark, in the Revised Bible. Eleven entire verses of this chapter after having been palmed off for two thousand years as the word of God; after being repeatedly quoted as representing God's mind on matters of faith; after causing untold misery, cruel wars, persecutions, diabolical tortures, and more than all these, such mental anguish in millions of sensitive minds as no repentance can atone for,—these verses, among which is the following: "Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to the whole Creation.... He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned,"—has been placed under an interrogation mark. Ah, for how much misery is the above damnatory clause responsible! How many lives this leprous falsehood has blasted! How this cruel imposture, like a malignant cancer, ate away the sound parts in human nature, for twenty long centuries!

Among these eleven verses are also Jesus' promise of miraculous power to his disciples, such as casting out devils, juggling with live serpents, drinking deadly poisons, laying hands on the sick,—which has filled our world with charlatans without number. But now comes the Revised Version, and quietly dismisses from the Word of God these eleven Verses, with these words in the margin: "The two oldest Greek manuscripts, and some other authorities, omit from verse 9 to the end (verse 20). Some other authorities have a different ending to the Gospel." Read the above carefully and reflect. The old translators suppressed all this information, and gave us to believe that we were not only reading the word of God, but the only word of God in existence. The revisers say, "Some other authorities have a different ending to the Gospel." Is not that edifying? How did they decide which "ending of the Gospel" to print as the Word of God? And why did the translators of the Bible wait two thousand years before they gave out this information? Is it to their increasing honesty that we owe this admission, or is it the increasing power of the non-churchgoing world which has compelled this admission from their lips? Yes, yes, pause and think of how an organization must have become gangrened with imposture to have successfully resisted every claim of truth and honor for two thousand years! This is a question of conscience as well as a question of knowledge. Why did the translators suppress the fact until a few years ago that, "Some other authorities have a different ending to the Gospel"?, and that "the two oldest Greek manuscripts and some other authorities omit from verse 9 to the end"? Time forbids me to give other illustrations of the—I regret to say it—manipulations of the Word of God by its custodians. The heart bleeds with mingled pain and indignation at the temerity and effrontery of the pious crew, who, to advance their "ism" or to make converts, did not hesitate to pervert history.

For two thousand years, for anyone to dare breathe a word against this Bible-inventing party, meant hell here and hereafter. Mark Antony invited Rome to weep over the prostrate form of assassinated Cæsar. I wish I could provoke you to a burning blush of indignation over the prostrate majesty of Europe and America at the feet of these unconscionable inventors of inspired texts. Blessed be the day which humbled the pride of the ecclesiastic, and wrested from his hands the power to suppress the truth!

But aside from doctoring their own Gospels, the early Christians did not hesitate to submit the writings of the great pagans,—Seneca, Pliny, Tacitus, Suetonious, Marcus Aurelius and the Jewish historian, Josephus, to the same indignity, by slipping passages into their works favorable to the Christian religion. Perhaps I am to be blamed for taking this matter so seriously, but how can I help it? I feel the wrong, the shame, and the crime of it, deep in my bones—when I picture to myself an Asiatic scribbler, a sectarian, a clown, a rogue, a cheat, tampering with the works of a