you may have been interrupted in the "creating" of me, and have turned me off as finished before you had put the finishing touches upon me. If this be so, O Lord, and you think it worth your while to put on the finishing touches, you know where to find me. How long would you take to put a new inside in me, one furnishing proofs of the Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension? I could spare you a week to complete the job, asking Julian and Fra: Ollæ to conduct the Secular Review while I was being overhauled. One condition only. If you take away my inside for repairs and additions, be sure to bring it back. I should not like to be left altogether hollow, and to be as the sounding brass and the tinkling cymbal.
Well, O Lord, from the foregoing you will be able to understand my position, and why I ask my questions at you direct, and not at the nearest mountebank you have stuck up in that impostor's box yclept a pulpit. Now for a question or two connected with your Book that baffle even the unscrupulous ingenuity of your pulpit hirelings. You will remember of old Abraham, or אברהם, as you more likely called him? Of course you remember of him: you keep him sitting up there somewhere, with his shirt-front constantly open, that saints may be taken into his bosom. This Abraham was, according to the Hebrew chronology, born 2,083 years after the "creation;" but, according to the Septuagint, 3,549 years after that event. So the two editions of thy Most Holy Word make a difference of 1,466 years in settling the date of the birth of thy servant Abraham, in whose bosom I may by and bye find a place and ask him to tell me the exact year in which he was born. Whether is the Hebrew version or the Septuagint version right, O Lord? or are they both wrong? or was there any Abraham at all? Down in this part of the world the saints pin their faith to your Hebrew version ; but when your son was tramping up and down Palestine some eighteen hundred years ago he generally quoted from the Septuagint. Which of the two versions do you wish me to prefer, or do you allow me to take my choice? If you do, my choice falls upon neither.
Yet some more figures, O Lord, in regard to your
