Page:Witchcraft In Christian Countries.pdf/6

8 the priest indulges in some philological hair-splitting, and "proves" that, after all, the word means something that really supports the faith by which he earns his bread. Men and women of England, how long will you stand this? How long will you submit to avaricious attempts to rifle your pockets, and subtile attempts to addle your brains? If from beginning to end the Bible teaches one thing clearly and without equivocation, it is that Jehovah believed in sorcery, and that sorcery should be punished by death.

Even if it were possible to cancel the terrible line in Exodus, what about Saul's weird interview with the Witch of Endor? Explain away the word witch there, and say that it does not mean witch, with the damnatory evidence before you that the Biblical has conjured up Samuel from the grave, and that Jehovah was so wroth with Saul for thus resorting to necromancy that he gave him a suicide's grave upon the bloody hill of Gilboa. Jehovah himself, in 1 Chronicles x. 13, 14, is explicit upon this: "So Saul died for his transgressions which he had committed against the Lord, even against the word of the Lord, which he kept not, and also for asking counsel of one that had a familiar spirit, to inquire of it, and inquired not of the Lord; therefore he slew him, and turned the kingdom unto David, the son of Jesse."

But even if the word chasaph and the word veneficus should not mean a witch, what then? Who is responsible? The stupid God who made the stupid men who made the stupid translation. On account of this appalling mistranslation hundreds of thousands of human beings must have ended their lives at the stake. It has been calculated that in England alone some thirty thousand persons, under the charge of sorcery, suffered the penalty of death. Be it God or be it Man who is responsible for bringing witchcraft under the sanction of the Bible, he has committed a crime against the human race which the redemptive blood of a thousand Christs would not wash away, for which an eternity in the fires of perdition could not atone. Be he God or Man who is responsible for the unspeakable guilt of mistranslating the word chasaph he merits the execrations of the world and curses from 100,000 blackened and