GOD AND HIS BOOK.
49
I could readily enough forgive those who scrubbed out the "lively oracles" in order to write in their place higher-class compositions than those of Bath-Kol; but I extend little mercy to the memory of those who erased the writings of Greek or Roman John Smith in order to make room for the crudities, silly fables, and mendacious puerilities of the Hebrew Jehovah. "Since the twelfth century the Greeks, sunk in ignorance, took it into their heads to erase the writings of old parchment MSS. and to write ecclesiastical treatises in them; and thus, to the unspeakable detriment of the republic of letters, such authors as Polybius, Dio, Diodorus Siculus, and some
