Page:God and His Book.djvu/151

139 morning, I saw the impression which had been thrown off, a certain sentence ran, "This is Sam Lundy.—Who the deuce is Sam Lundy?" You, O Lord, in that extraordinary Book of yours, must surely have suffered from this sort of thing.

O Holy Lord! where were you brought up? Your son was born in a stable; and, if you were brought up in one, I must excuse you for the lack of refinement and even decency which characterises much of your Book. To tell you the candid truth, your Book is obscene. I could point you out passage after passage, ad nauseam which would incontrovertibly establish my assertion. But, if I were to do so, my Book would be nearly as nasty as yours; and, although it may not shock the feelings and injure the reputation of a god to write an obscene book, it would shock the feelings and injure the reputation of any ordinary human author, including the one who at present, with so much candour, addresses you.

Dens and Liguori are filthier even than you; but you beat Ovid in nastiness and Boccacio in lasciviousness; only Boccacio is a smarter and more accomplished writer than the Ghost. Many writers have eclipsed the Ghost at pretty and witty voluptuousness; but, for good, clean, unornamental dirt, I will back him against any author, living or dead. Do you ask me, O Lord, to quote from your Book to establish my position? O Lord, I should rather not, unless you really insist upon my doing so.

You will have heard, O Lord, of one of your creatures of the name of R. L. Sheil? Of course you will have heard of him, for he was a person of some distinction, being the Right Honourable Richard Lalor Sheil, M.P. Well, this creature whom you "created," and whom you saw fit to exalt to the position of Member of Parliament, says:—

Many passages in Scripture are written with such force, and, I may say, with such nakedness of diction, as to render them unfit for indiscriminate perusal. There are parts of the Old Testament an which images of voluptuousness are presented to the mind on