Page:God and His Book.djvu/147

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
GOD AND HIS BOOK
137

not be a trifle better in hell, and, if possible, even further my God from thee?

3. The trap sprang upon the two rabbits in Eden, and it was some 4,000 years before anything was done to take its iron out of their flesh, to take its teeth out of their bones. Is this a specimen of "loving kindness and tender mercy" as the expression is understood in heaven? Did the monotheos take 4,000 years to unscrew himself into segments, and send down the third part of himself to see what could be done by way of atoning for the snapping of that trap in Eden? What a clumsily-constructed monotheos! I could unscrew a tricycle to pieces in four minutes. It apparently takes 4,000 years to screw a God into three. It shall take less than 4,000 years now, however, to screw this deity out of existence. Have not men eaten of the "forbidden fruit" of the tree of Knowledge, and is not the fact screwing Jehovah's neck?

4. After the third part did come down here to see what could be done for the limbs which had been broken in Eden's patent damnation-trap, could he, she, or it not have set about the task in a more sensible fashion? Tramping about in an obscure and outlandish corner of the world, accompanied by twelve yokels and a few huzzies, and talking communism and nonsense, was, to put it mildly, a roundabout way of breaking the rusty iron and the gory teeth of that trap in which all creation groaned. This third part of God lived as long as it could, and died when it could not help it; and I am rather anxious to know what this had to do with the redemption of mankind. Had not the last blossom that fell from the apple tree, has not every snow-drop that holds out its white cup to catch the dew, has not every flake of thistle-down which the wind blows over the field, as much to do with the redemption of man as had the life and death of that poor peasant of Palestine? Answer me, O God; and you can answer me only one way, unless you be as priest-cursed and credulous as the bipeds down here who are half-blind to the glory of thy creation, living as they do in a fantastic and horror-haunted creation of their own brain. Send us common sense, O