Page:Annie Besant, Is the Bible Indictable.djvu/12

 and if prosecuted as an obscene book, it must necessarily be condemned, if the law is justly administered. Every Christian ought therefore to range himself on our side, and demand a reversal of the present rule, for under it his own sacred book is branded as obscene, and may be prosecuted as such by any unbeliever.

First, the book is widely circulated at a low price. If the Bible were restricted in its circulation by being sold at 10s. 6d. or a guinea, it might escape being placed in the category of obscene literature under the present ruling. But no such defence can be pleaded for it. It is sold at 8d. a copy, printed on cheap paper, and strongly bound, for use in schools; it is given away by thousands among the "common people," whose morals are now so carefully looked after in the matter of books; it is presented to little children of both sexes, and they are told to read it carefully. To such an extent is this carried, that some thousands of children assembled together were actually told by Lord Sandon, the Vice-President of the Committee of Council on Education, to read the Bible right through from beginning to end, and were bidden not to pick and choose. The element of price is clearly against the Bible if it be proved to have in it anything which is of a nature calculated to suggest impure thoughts.

As to the motives of the writers, we need not trouble about them. The law now says that intention is nothing, and no desire to do good is any excuse for obscenity (Trial, p. 257).

There remains the vital question: is the effect of some of its passages to excite and create demoralising thoughts? (Trial, p. 261).

The difficulty of dealing with this question is that many of the quotations necessary to prove that the Bible comes under the ruling of the Lord Chief Justice are of such an extremely coarse and disgusting character, that it is really impossible to reproduce them without intensifying the evil which they are calculated to do. While I see no indecency in a plain statement of physiological facts, written for people's instruction, I do see indecency in coarse and indelicate stories, the reading of which can do no good to any human being, and can have no effect save that of corrupting the mind and suggesting unclean ideas. I therefore refuse to soil my pages with quotations, and content myself with giving the references, so that