Deuteronomy xxi. 10-14 instructs the Hebrew that if, after victory, he sees a beautiful woman and desires her, he may take her, and if later, “thou have no delight in her, then thou shalt let her go whither she will,” to starvation, to misery, what matter, after God’s chosen is satisfied.  Deut. xxiii. 2 punishes a man for that which is no fault of his, his illegitimate birth.  We have omitted many absurd precepts found in this Mosaic code, and have only chosen those which are grossly immoral, and can be defended by no kind of reasoning as to “defective,” or “imperfect” morality, “suited to a nation in a low stage of civilisation.”

These laws not only fall short of a perfect morality, but they are distinctly and foully immoral, and tend directly to the brutalisation of the nation which should live under them.  It is true that there is much pure morality in this code, and some refined feeling here and there.  These jewels are curiously out of place in their surroundings.  Imagine a people so savage as to need laws permitting all the abominations referred to above, and yet so cultivated as to be capable of appreciating the beauty of:  “If thou see the ass of him that hateth thee lying under his burden, and wouldest forbear to help him; thou shalt surely help him” (Exodus xxiii. 5).  It is time that it should be publicly acknowledged that the so-called Mosaic code is literally a mosaic of scattered fragments of legislation, of various ages, and various stages of civilisation, put together a few hundred years before Christ.  At present, the whole code lies on the shoulders of Christianity, and is fairly pleaded against it by the Freethinker.

It is not necessary to speak here against the practical morality of Old Testament saints; the very names of Lot, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Joshua, Samuel, David, etc., bring before the mind’s eye a list of crimes so foul, so cowardly, so bloody, that no enumeration of them can be needed.  Of them, we may fairly say with Virgil:—­

    “Non ragioniam di lor, ma guarda e passa.”

Turning to the New Testament morality, we may attack it in various ways:  we may argue that the better part of it is not new, and therefore cannot be regarded as especially inspired, or that it leaves out of account many virtues necessary to the well-being of families and states; or we may contend that much of it is harmful, and much of it impracticable.

The better part is that which is NON-ORIGINAL.  All that is fair and beautiful in Christian morality had been taught in the world ages before Christ was born.  Buddha, Confucius, Lao-Tsze, Mencius, Zoroaster, Manu, taught the noble human morality found in some of the teaching ascribed to Christ (throughout this Section the morality put into Christ’s mouth in the New Testament will be treated as his).