I have before ventured my opinion on the political history of the Israelites and their wars, and I wish I could not believe in them; but I fear that portion of their history is too true. The example thus set has been followed since by other nations, to wage the horrid wars in which they have embarked on the most trivial pretences, whenever their rulers found it convenient to give vent to their bad passions, wantonly to engage in them. There are many other matters related in the Bible which operate as stumbling-blocks to those who otherwise revere it for the clear truths set forth in its texts. These consist in one part contradicting, or apparently contradicting, another part, and, in some cases, of making assertions which appear to be derogatory to the Majesty of Omnipotence. There may, indeed, be two causes assigned as reasons for these. The first is, in reading many portions of the Scriptures literally which must have been intended to be understood allegorically. It surely could never be meant to be literally understood that the sun and moon stood still by the command of Joshua, till he was “avenged of his enemies,” and that the regular order of nature and the universe was set aside to please Joshua in his man-killing pursuits. That this was the way by which Omnipotence willed the destruction of whole nations of people, does not seem to accord with the reverence with which man ought to view his Maker, when, had it been His will that such nations should no longer inhabit the earth, the whole of such a people thus devoted might have been annihilated by a puff of pestilential wind, if Omnipotence had pleased to do so. Although it does not become us to scan what was, or what was not, His will, as we can only judge of all such matters according to our crude and weak conceptions. The next cause for suspecting the accuracy of several parts of the Sacred Book arises from the supposition that these may not have been correctly translated.[40] All these seemingly contradictory passages, not being clearly understood, have been a most fertile source of employment for self-interested and bigoted men, who have attempted giving their explanations and contradictory comments and annotations upon them, and twisted them into meanings, often to bewilder the common sense of mankind, to suit certain selfish purposes subservient to their own ends. It would, I think, have been much better to have left people to judge upon these texts as well as they could themselves, rather than trust to such explanations, or to pin their faith on the sleeve of such men. I fear they have done more harm than good.
But all these and such like doubts seem trivial and light in the balance when weighed against the solid, sublime truths and valuable instructions contained in the ancient, venerable book. The mind of man thus prepared by the sacred texts laid open to him by the Bible, as well as by the help of other systems of morality, which all lend their help to lead him in the paths of rectitude—in this state he sees himself surrounded by the wonders of creation, and furnished with passions given him for the wisest purposes, to spur him on to exertions without which the affairs of this beautiful world would soon be at a stand-still, and he would then soon revert to unintellectual apathy or savage barbarity, and would cease to adore God, and seek His providential care and protection. But, when the passions are not fully kept under by the reasoning guide, man feels himself to be a strange compound—a heterogeneous mixture of pure metal and base alloy, and placed in the infancy of an endless, and therefore an infinitely important and mysterious, but conscious existence. “Wonderfully and fearfully made,” he views with amazement “this pleasing, anxious being”—this spirit confined in mortality with Heaven’s own pilot placed within as its guide, and a soul, fed like the flame of a lamp, to enlighten his path to eternity. Thus prepared by the hand of Omnipotence, his reasoning powers commence their operations; his mind is then his kingdom, and his will his law as to his deeds in this life, but for which he must render an account before the justice of his Maker, in another state of ex............