I believe in two things: Discipline and the Bible. Here, you'll receive both. Put your trust in the Lord. Your ass belongs to me.
He supposed that the intent of the Gospels was to teach people, among other things, to be merciful, even to the lowest of the low.
But the Gospels actually taught this: before you kill somebody, make absolutely sure he isn't well-connected. So it goes.
— Hey, Charlie, there is somethin' in the Bible I do believe.
— What's that, sir.
— "Thou shall not covet thy neighbor's wife."
— I believe in that, too. But what happens when thy neighbor's wife covets you?
Is there a father who would persecute his baby with unearned colics and the unearned miseries of teething, and follow these with mumps, measles, scarlet fever, and the hundred other persecutions appointed for the unoffending creature? And then follow these, from youth to the grave, with a multitude of ten-thousandfold punishments for laws broken either by intention or indiscretion? With a fine sarcasm, we ennoble God with the title of Father—yet we know quite well that we should hang His style of father wherever we might catch him.
CAN'T YOU SEE?
I DECEIVED THEM.
SUCH WEAK MINDS.
There are one or two curious defects about Bibles. An almost pathetic poverty of invention characterizes them all. That is one striking defect. Another is that each pretends to originality, without possessing any. Each borrows from the others, and gives no credit, which is a distinctly immoral act. Each, in turn, confiscates decayed old stage-properties from the others, and with naïve confidence puts them forth as fresh new inspirations from on high.