who have been educated in the popular religious sentiment of christendom, so called.

SEC. 2. As every individual of contemplative mind has done, in every country and age of the world, when and where he had opportunity for so doing, and the burden of thought, whether good or bad, was absorbing his vitality, and, as it were, eating out his very life, Moses, very properly, stole away from the gaze of the multitude, and from the tumultuous commotion which necessarily attends collected masses of mankind, ever, for the purpose of private meditation. The record says, that he, Moses, went up unto God. Now, God, the universal Father, at all times, is everywhere -as much in one place as in another; his presence is just as much in the hells as in the heavens, but his power is not alike operative in all places. Where the active forces of his power are in the ascendency there is harmony, and wherever it is not the controlling power there is tumult and discord.

SEC. 3. "The Lord called to him, Moses, out of the mountain," so reads the record. This may have been so, and it is very probable that he did, for he is calling upon all men, in every place, to come up higher, in a moral and spiritual point of view, and to do greater works of beneficence and love, to fellowman. But the point where I take issue with the record is with what it says that the Lord, meaning the Father of universal spirit-life, told Moses to say to the house of Jacob, and to the children of Israel. This could not have been true; and, if Moses heard those words spoken they were the echoes of himself, only. For the unchanging Father of Infinite Love and universal Justice is not the author, nor an instigator, of caste among equal brethren of the same race. And he does not barter with the children of men in order to induce them to become the subjects of his reign, nor does he banter with them by flattering promises to the end that they do that which he woulá that they should. This Moses' Lord did.

SEC. 4. According to the record, Moses was the sole

In

medium of communication between some invisible power, which he called the Lord, and the children of Israel. All of the preliminaries to the covenant mentioned in the above quotation from Exodus, and which that text says was made between that invisible Lord and the people, were arranged by, or through, Moses, he being the oracle for both of the said parties. 'The specifications to that covenant were these: the people should obey the Lord's voice, which should be heard speaking either to, or through, Moses, and to keep his covenant; to keep which, according to the stipulatious of the bond, was to render implicit obedience to all the edicts, laws and ordinances, which Moses, or his Lord speaking through him, forever thereafter, should proclaim. other words, the stipulations of the covenant, as Moses had them drafted and presented for the people to ratify, required implicit obedience on the part of the people to all that Moses' Lord should dictate; in other words, whatever Moses ordered should be done, or that the people should observe, and it was in harmony with the spirit of his Lord, the conditions of the covenant required that the people do as he commanded. Then, they were not only to submit to be governed by absolute authority, but they were to be passively submissive to be governed, subordinately, by priests and princes of Moses' own manufacturing; and, on compliance with all the aforesaid conditions, they, by the terms of the covenant, should be deemed by Moses' Lord a mighty good people-" then they should be a peculiar treasure unto him above all people;" and on those conditions he would do well by them, and he could do it, because he was abundantly able; for the whole earth was his: so reads the record.

SEC. 5. After Moses came down from Horeb, and as the result of the conference which he there held with his Lord, the first movement that he made towards the consummation of his designs-the accomplishing of his purposes to prostrate and subdue the people to his will, and install himself permanently in authority over them-was to extort, by

craftiness, this pledge from the people, namely: that they would obey the voice of the Lord with whom he had just been in consultation, and to keep the covenant which he pretended to them that the universal Father had told him to obtain from them. And as a pledge on the part of his Lord, that he would fulfill on his part, the people must look at his record, see what he had done to the Egyptians, and what for them.

SEC. 6. It will be seen that the pledge was exacted of the people, by Moses, without his giving them any information, whatever, as to what would be the laws, ordinances, and dicta to which they would be required to render obedience the oath of allegiance was required by the Lord without, at the same time, permitting the subjects to know the obligations which they were assuming. The laws, edicts, and proclamations were all kept in the dark, and they were required to affirm not knowing what they were swearing to maintain, or to obey. None but despots, and of these, none but those who are of the darkest hue, and occupy the position of a craven tyrant, would ask of any people such a pledge, much less would they require it of a free people, as the children of Israel were before they took this pledge. But enough on this subject, for the present.

CHAPTER XXI.

MOSES AND THE ISRAELITES IN THE WILDERNESS OF SINAITHINGS THERE SAID AND DONE.

"And Moses came and called for the elders of the people, and laid before their faces all these words which the Lord commanded him. And all the people answered together, and said, all that the Lord hath spoken we will do. And Moses returned the words of the people unto the Lord. And the Lord said unto Moses, lo, I come unto thee in a thick cloud, that the people may hear when I speak with thee, and believe thee forever. And Moses told the words of the people unto the Lord. And the Lord said unto Moses, go unto the people, and sanctify them to-day and to-morrow, and let them wash their clothes, and be ready against the third day: for the third day the Lord will come down in the sight of all the people upon mount Sinal. And thou shalt set bounds unto the people round about, saying, take heed to yourselves, that ye go not up into the mount, or touch the border of it: whosoever toucheth the mount shall surely be put to death: there shall not an hand touch it, but he shall surely be stoned, or shot through; whether it be beast or man, it shall not live: when the trumpet soundeth long, they shall come up to the mount.

"And Moses went down from the mount unto the people, and sanctified the people; and they washed their clothes. And he said unto the people; be ready against the third day.

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And it came to pass on the third day in the morning, that there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of the trumpet exceedingly loud; so that all the people that was in the camp trembled. And Moses brought forth the people out of the camp to meet with God; and they stood at the nether part of the mount. And mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire: and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly. And when the voice of the trumpet sounded long, and waxed louder and louder, Moses spake, and God answered him by a voice. And the Lord came down upon mount Sinai, on the top of the mount; and the Lord called Moses up to the top of the mount; and Moses went up. And the Lord said unto Moses, go down, charge the people, lest they break through unto the Lord to gaze, and many of them perish. And let the priests also, which come near to the Lord, sanctify themselves, lest

the Lord break forth upon them. And Moses said unto the Lord, the peoplo cannot come up to mount Sinai; for thou chargest us, saying, set bounds about the mount, and sanctify it. And the Lord said unto him, away, get thee down, and thou shalt come up, thou, and Aaron with thee: but let not the priests and the people break through to come unto the Lord, lest he break forth upon them. So Moses went down unto the people, and spake unto them." [EX. XIX: 7-25.

SECTION 1. Notwithstanding the above extract from the auto-biography of Moses is regarded by millions of honesthearted men and women, both in Jewry and in Christendom, as a truthful record of acts of the Most High, and of deeds of individuals who were divinely inspired, when it is viewed from the stand-point of moral truth, and by the standard of the Spirit of God, the source of all intellectual life, and analyzed in the light of enlightened reason, and with candor and impartiality, it is seen that this narration, though written by the chief impostor himself, is simply a relation of one phase of one of the darkest, and the most stupendous frauds that has been successfully played off on mankind. And though it is dressed up in the garb of sanctity, and received as truth by millions, and like numbers have died without having ever had the least suspicion of the fraudulent character of the narration, and of the untruthfulness of this, the foundation to their religious faith, all this has not changed the essential nature of the fraud imposed, nor has it ceased to damn all conscientious persons who embrace the imposition as being divine truth. Taking observations from the stand-point which I occupy, and judging from the effects of his life and teachings upon the temporal and spiritual welfare of the human family, which I behold, no one individual of our species, either in Jewry or Christendom, has so defamed the character of our heavenly Father, and so deeply cursed this portion of mankind, as did this Moses, author of the Pentateuch; whether he was a real or fictitious person the effect has been, and is, the same on mankind, for they have believed that the record published in his name to be authentic.