the Koran, one single passage that even approaches the immorality of this; one single passage in which the prophet of Mecca (ready as he was to use the scimitar argument,) even distantly and indirectly ventures such an outrage on the human reason and the human heart; in which the murderer of Sophyant dares, I say not to approve, but even hesitatingly to excuse, such a wholesale massacre as this. You talk of the brutal sensuality, the vile abominations, the horrid and impious rights, the human sacrifices, that disgraced Canaan. I challenge you, sir, to produce the faintest shadow of proof, that all the conjectured enormities committed for centuries among the Canaanites matched this one hydra-barbarity of the Jews. Cite to me only one instance of brutal sensuality like theirs who forcibly possessed themselves of thirtytwo thousand young virgins, after having first murdered their mothers and their infant brothers before their eyes! Relate to me only one vile abomination like this monstrous compound of slaughter and lust. Adduce only one horrid and impious rite that will compare with that superintended by the Hebrew prophet; or only one human sacrifice, like the offering up of fifty thousand women and children on a single field of blood, to the Jehovah of Israel!

But one! I ask but ONE! and then you may talk to me, if you will, of the knowledge and the light that succeeded to pagan darkness-of the sublimity, and glory, and mercy of that religion that replaced the idolatry of Canaan!

"The sword" (you see fit to remind us,) "went through the land and cleansed its pollutions with the blood of its inhabitants. Their high places of idolatry were destroyed, their altars were overthrown, their pillars broken down, their groves burnt with fire, and their graven images hewn in pieces." And in all this, you think, there is cause for infinite congratulation! Let me ask you, sir, if modern missionaries were to imitate this savage intolerance, what the world would say of them? The poor votaries of Juggernaut are sunk as low, surely, as ever were the

* If you do not happen to possess a copy, I have one at your service.

Mahomet commanded Abdo'llah secretly to assassinate Sophyan the son of Khade, his bitterest enemy, and gave the assassin his walking cane in sign of his friendship. This murder is one of the blackest stains on Mahomet's character.-Gagnier, Vie de Mahomet, vol. i., p. 374.

And it is but a poor excuse for the Arabian prophet, (though an excellent reason why Christians should view his crime with especial charity,) that the "man after God's own heart" has a yet blacker one to answer for: 2 Samuel, chap. xi, ver 15: though, to my mind, even such duplicity and cruelty towards Uriah is cast into the shade by the deliberate, cold-blooded spirit of undying revenge which could dictate (even on a deathbed!) to his son, the miserable subterfuge by which the father's promise of protection was to be evaded, and his unforgiven enemy to be murdered in his old age. 1 Kings, chap ii., ver. 8-10. His last dying words breathed of hatred and blood. Strange! strange and melancholy! that men should set up characters so dead to the gentler virtues as these, and fall down and worship them, as bright examples to the inhabitants of earth, and chose prophets or selected favourites of the sovereign of heaven!

Canaanites; and, without intending any very flattering complıment to you and your fellow Christians, I may place you at least as high in the scale of humanity as the Jews in Moses' time. What think you, then, of arming against the Asiatic idolaters, whose heart God has hardened against missionary preaching? What think you of cleansing their pollutions with their blood, of overthrowing their altars, of hewing their great idol to pieces, of murdering their women and boys, fifty thousand at a time, and taking their girls for yourselves? You shrink, almost as from an insult, at the bare supposition? I doubt it not. Yet it is your heart alone that revolts from the atrocity; your Bible countenances it. It is the spirit of progressive improvement that denounces and neutralises the spirit of the Old Testament.

You attempt to defend the gratuitous obscenities of the scriptures by attacking my opinions on morals. This, sir, permit me to remind you, is no defence whatever. If I were a Nero or Caligula, that could have nothing to do with the question. The obscenities would not change their character on that account. But I evade not, rest assured, the implied accusation. The public have my opinions on marriage, * my remarks on placements,† and my "Moral Physiology" before them; I request them either to suspend judgment, or do me the justice to read these; and when they have read them, I appeal to their better feelings in support of the assertion I here make, that the language employed is free even from the slightest taint of indecency, and that I have not advanced a single sentiment throughout, which I have not adduced sufficient reason for believing to be eminently conducive to the increase of unaffected chastity and rational virtue.

You have succeeded in proving that the sages of antiquity were imperfect mortals like ourselves,§ and that we have made in some respects considerable advance since their days. This

* See my letter to the editor of the Boston Trumpet, republished as Note A in the Appendix to this volume.

See, for the article referred to, Note B in the Appendix.

You told me, a few days since, that you had never read this work. The public, I trust, will not imitate you in thus judging first and reading afterwards. Nor do they seem inclined so to do. Already, within seven months from its first appearance, the fifth edition is called for; which I am now (July, 1831,) engaged in revising for the press.

§ Nevertheless I must call upon you for your authority for the stories about Socrates' wife and his impure amours. I never heard of them before. Lempriere, who is classical authority, says not a word of them, but quotes Socrates as "an unparalleled example of an affectionate husband."

That our readers may not impute to Lycurgus and his biographer Plutarch, a degree of licentiousness which was altogether foreign to Spartan manners, I beg them to read the whole passage, as given in Plutarch's Lives, article, Lycurgus, vol. i., p. 80; Philadelphia edition.

With Cicero, when he says he could more easily tell what he did not think than what he did think, regarding the nature of God, I sympathize and agree. He was wiser than our modern theologians.

Calicratides said nothing more than is openly said by a vicious but omnipotent public opinion, at the present day.

is an excellent argument in proof that the world is progressively improving, but no argument at all in proof of the necessity of revelation. Man was ignorant previous to experience; he is daily acquiring experience, and becoming wiser in consequence. And here I am constrained to conclude, without enlarging, as I intended, on this latter argument, and without having found opportunity to speak of the French Revolution.

ROBERT DALE Owen.

SIR,

TO ROBERT DALE OWEN.

LETTER IV.

New-York, July 23, 1831.

I laid it down in my last letter as a fundamental principle, that the great arbiter of life and death had a perfect right to say when and how the lives of his creatures should be disposed of, and that he could with as much propriety employ the sword for the chastisement of a nation, as the earthquake, or famine, or pestilence, or any other natural means. On this ground I contended, that the extermination of the nations of Canaan by the Israelites, if commanded by God, (which is the very question in dispute,) would be altogether proper, and perfectly in unison with his other operations on the vast scale of divine providence. At the same time I admitted, that this very extermi. nation would have been murder, if uncommanded by him. Consequently it follows, that no justification of a similar course toward other nations not specified, could be drawn from that special commission, even by the Jews, and therefore certainly not by others. This furnishes an answer to the plea of the followers of Mahomet for their wars, and would be a sufficient reply to the "missonaries," should they propose a crusade against the heathen. And although the former pretend that Allah commanded theirs, it should be remembered that pretending and proving are two things. Wherefore, all that long dialogue in my opponent's last letter, goes for just nothing at all. That the Israelites were commanded by God to do as they did, is one object of this discussion to show. But they were not commanded, Deuteronomy, chap. xx., ver. 12, 13, to slaughter all the enemies. By reading the two preceding verses, it will be seen, that they were first to offer peace, which, if accepted by those to whom it was offered, was to preserve them from slaughter. But certain cities which the Israelites were themselves to inhabit, were to be utterly destroyed, that they might not be contaminated with the infernal abominations of their

heathen inhabitants; to which contamination they would have been exposed, had they intermingled with them. Why God does not now command a similar course in relation to the heathen of this day, he best knows. For aught that we finite creatures know to the contrary, he sees good reasons under existing circumstances for adopting a different method. This much however I would say that the cruel and abominable rites of the heathen: their infanticide, their cannibalism, their human sacrifices, and their obscenities and impurities, ought not to be tolerated by their rulers; and that, if any cause under heaven, without the express command of God, would justify the interference of one nation with the internal concerns of another, Christendom would be justified in sending her legions to the East, and terminating those vile and accursed practices by force. That the Israelites, therefore, did not tolerate the barbarous rites of the Canaanites when they took possession of the country, is a circumstance altogether in their favour. And as to the servitude, and the everlasting servitude of the Canaanites, this is no argument for the slavery of the Africans a day or a moment. It is no reason that we should enslave Africans, because God saw fit to direct the Jews, under their peculiar circumstances, to make the Canaanites their servants. Nor is the mere record of this or any other fact in history, any reason for its imitation. With regard to witchcraft I would say, that no witch ought to live. Now, sir, prove that the Salem sufferers were witches, and I stand ready to justify the course pursued toward them. But if they were not witches, then there was no sanction in the Bible for their execution, even on the supposition that this Jewish law is obligatory on us, which would remain to be considered; for that does not say, Thou shalt not suffer an imaginary witch to live. But, by the way, please to inform me what branch of modern knowledge tells us, that witchcraft can have no existence; for I must confess that I believe in the 22nd chapter of Exodus, as fully us ever Cotton Mather did. I have no notion of conceding one half the Bible for the sake of defending the other. I believe there were witches and demoniacs in Bible days, whether there are any

now or not.

It is truly comical to see how some men attempt to avoid difficulties by non-committal. Propose a subject for consideration, and up they jump upon the fence, leaving the opposing sides to contest it as they can; and prepared to jump whithersoever victory inclines. The interests of a world, yea, the eternal destiny of our race, may hang suspended on its decision; it troubles not them. For aught they care, it may go undecided. They, prudent souls, are not going to venture themselves where the bullets fly, and the bayonets gleam, and the swords brandish. Not they. They leave others to fight the battle; and when the one side gets pushed, O! they don't belong to that side. Should the tide turn, and the other side.

get pushed, why, they don't belong to that side. And when the conflict is o'er, and the victory won, with the greatest selfcomplacency in the world they exclaim, We are not of the defeated party.-No, nor of the victorious one either, it might be answered. They had not the courage to enter the lists at all. And less honourable in their course, than that of either of the belligerent parties. The latter contend for important objects, and, defeated or victorious, manifest therein a becoming interest. Whereas, they of the fence would sooner see heaven and earth come together, than not escape with whole skins. This, sir, is precisely the case of the individual who perches himself upon the moral fence between theism and atheism. Let the theist press him with the absurdities of atheism, and he will instantly reply, I am not an atheist. Let the atheist then' assail him, and he as readily answers I am not a theist. Well, sir, be nothing then and welcome, and for once take the consequences; for, know thou assuredly, that 'tis the most indefensible of all positions. The man that takes his station between two armies, runs the risk of getting peppered by both. Prepare then, sir, for the fate merited by all fence men, and stand, if thou canst, the cross-fire of Christianity and atheism.

The fence man says, he believes no way. Well, then, he does not believe the truth; for there is a God, or there is not. He therefore is in fault in believing no way; for he ought to believe the truth in so important and practical a case as this, whether he has any belief in relation to lunar monsters or not. Nor does he merely do wrong in forbearing to believe, but he acts very unreasonably. It is not supposable, that, in a case like the one before us, the evidences on each side are equal, or that there are no evidences. If the universe was created by God, it does of course exhibit traces of transcendant wisdom: if uncreated, no such traces. It is therefore but for a man to open his eyes, to be able to form an opinion the one way or the other; and surely he who will not do this, is but poorly entitled to the name of a free inquirer, or a reasonable man. Besides, he certainly cannot be the loser by taking sides; for there is no possibility of his being right where he is. This he knows, and is therefore inexcusable for remaining there. Whereas, by changing his position, he would stand some chance of becoming right. He would take one step toward it at least, in that he would then begin to exercise his reason. So much for the peculiar difficulties of the man of the fence. But he is not to be let off with this; for he has the burthen both of theism and atheism to bear besides. He says he does not deny a God, that is, a finite one. Very well. Then he does not deny the absurdity of the existence of a being able to roll the wheels of nature, but unable to kill a flea! Then he does not deny the propriety of the destruction of cities by the God of the earthquake and the volcano, and consequently gets involved, after all, in the dilemma of the deist, which he fain would avoid. Take