Bible and Women.

We would hardly expect the gentleman ever to manage a divorce case. And yet nothing pleases him better. The divorce page 15 system of Illinois is very far below that of the law of Moses. And yet Mr. Ingersoll finds no fault with it on that account. But Israelites were only out of bondage, and because of the condition in which they then were, Moses gave them this permit, Mark x., 5. Generally, infidel lectures fault the Scriptures because they are two strict respecting divorce.

When the gentleman said "there wasn't one word in the Old Testament for women except words of shame and humilation," he exhibited the quality for which he is more noted than for any other. I will name a few respects in which the Law of Moses was superior to any ancient and modern laws, in awarding justice and furnishing protection to woman.

1.	A widow's garment should not be demanded as surety Dent, xxiv., 17.
2.	She could demand the care and protection of the community as her right. Ex. xxii., 22; Deut. xxvii., 19.
3.	And any neglect or oppression was condemned. Job xxii., 9; Psalms xciv., 6.
4.	In times of danger she could deposit her property in the treasury for safe keeping. 2 Macc. iii., 10.
5.	Any outrage on a maiden was visited with the severest punishment. Deut. xxii., 25-27. After all this, while listening to the odes of Deborah and Hannah, and the song of triumph led by Miriam; yet hearing of the immortal honor of Jephthah's daughter; our ears yet greeted with the shouting joy of the multidude of women as they went out to meet Saul and David returning with the victorious army, he still says there was nothing but shame and humiliation for the women.

High above all the laws of the ancients was that of Moses respecting woman. Indeed, the Bible has ever been, and is now, the best friend to women. And just as it is believed and followed does she come to be the companion and equal of man.

"What woman believed in the institution of polygamy? What man believed in that infamy? If they did not they were better than their God 4,000 years ago, who believed in it, and taught it, and upheld it. The speaker denounced it as the infamy of infamies, and made an eloquent plea for the sancity of the family hearth."

God never believed in nor taught polygamy. The Scriptures can not be found that so teach. God suffered it, and so he suffered unnumbered nuisances to run at large. Even good men now commit blunders as they did then. But that in no way indicates that God sanctioned polygamy. But where did Mr. page 16 Ingersoll learn to abhor this institution with such righteous indignation? Has it been among the nations who know not God? These nations practice polygamy yet. Did he get his aversion from the philosophy of scepticism? It contains no teaching on the subject. Indeed, as we shall see, even in his own creed, men are left to follow out their own preferences. It seems then that he objects to the Bible because he makes it contradict the morality which he has learned from it. But in this he was only about as inconsistent as his system.