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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 42

How is that for Dampness?

How is that for Dampness?

No wonder they said the windows of the heavens were open. If I had been there I would have said the whole side of the house was out. How long were they in this ark? A year and ten days, floating around with no rudder, no sail, nobody on the outside at all. The window was shut, and there was no door, except the one that shut on the outside. Who ran this ark—who took care of it I Finally it came down on Mount Ararat, a peak seventeen thousand feet above the level of the sea, with about three thousand feet of snow, and it stopped there simply to give the animals from the tropics a chance. Then Noah opened the window and got a breath of fresh air, and he let all the animals out; and then Noah took a drink, and God made a bargain with him that he would not drown us any more, and He put a rainbow in the clouds and said: "When I see that I will recollect that I have promised not to drown you." Because if it was not for that He is apt to drown us at any moment. Now can anybody believe that that is the origin of the rainbow? Are you not all familiar with the natural causes which bring those beautiful arches before our eyes! Then the people started out again, and they were as bad as before. Here let me ask why God did not make Noah in the first place? He knew he would have to drown Adam and Eve and all his family. Then another thing, why did he want to drown the animals? What had they done? What crime had they committed? It is very hard to answer these questions—that is for a man who has only been born once. After a while they tried to build a tower to get into heaven, and the gods heard about it and said: "Let's go down and see what man is up to." They came and found tilings a great deal worse than they thought, and thereupon they confounded the language to prevent them succeeding so that the fellow up above could not shout down 'mortar" or "brick" to the one below, and they had to give it up. Is it possible that anyone believes that that is the reason why we have the variety of languages in the world? Do you know that language is born of human experience, and is a physical science? Do you know that every word has been suggested in some way by the feelings or observations of man—that there are words as tender as the dawn, as serene as the stars, and others as wild as the beasts? Do you know that language is dying and being born continually—that every language has its cemetery and cradle, its bud and blossom page 9 and withered leaf? Man has loved, enjoyed, and suffered, and language is simply the expression he gives those experiences.

Then the world began to divide, and the Jewish nation was started. Now, I want to say that at one time your ancestors, like mine, were barbarians. If the Jewish people had to write these books now they would be civilized books, and I do not hold them responsible for what their ancestors did. We find the Jewish people first in Canaan, and there were seventy of them, counting Joseph and his children already in Egypt. They lived two hundred and fifteen years, and they then went down into Egypt and stayed there two hundred and fifteen years; they were four hundred and thirty years in Canaan and Egypt. How many did they have when they went to Egypt? Seventy. How many were they at the end of two hundred and fifteen years? Three millions. That is a good many. We had at the time of the Revolution in this country three millions of people. Since that time there have been four doubles, until we have forty-eight millions to-day. How many would the Jews number at the same ratio in two hundred and fifteen years I Call it eight doubles and we have forty thousand. But instead of forty thousand they had three millions. How do I know they had three millions? Because they had six hundred thousand men of war. For every honest voter in the State of Illinois there will be five other people, and there are always more voters than men of war. They must have had at the lowest possible estimate three millions of people. Is that true? Is there a minister in the city of Chicago that will certify to his own idiocy by claiming that they could have increased to three millions by that time? If there is, let him say so. Do not let him talk about the civilizing influence of a lie.

When they got into the desert they