Sir, I come now to the Bible argument. I begin at the beginning of
eternity! (Laughter.) WHAT is RIGHT AND WRONG? _That's the question of
questions_.

Two theories have obtained in the world. The one is, that right and wrong
are eternal facts; that they exist _per se_ in the nature of things; that
they are ultimate truths above God; that he must study, and does study, to
know them, as really as man. And that he comprehends them more clearly
than man, only because he is a better student than man. Now, sir, _this
theory is atheism_. For if right and wrong are like mathematical
truths--fixed facts--then I may find them out, as I find out mathematical
truths, without instruction from God. I do not ask God to tell me that one
and one make two. I do not ask him to reveal to me the demonstrations of
Euclid. I thank him for the mind to perceive. But I perceive mathematical
relations without his telling me, because they exist independent of his
will. If, then, moral truths, if right and wrong, if rectitude and sin,
are, in like manner, fixed, eternal facts,--if they are out from and above
God, like mathematical entities,--then I may find them for myself. I may
condescend, perhaps, to regard the Bible as a hornbook, in which God, an
older student than I, tells _me_ how to _begin_ to learn what he had to
study; or I may decline to be taught, through the Bible, how to learn
right and wrong. I may think the Bible was good enough, may be, for the
Israelite in Egypt and in Canaan; good enough for the Christian in
Jerusalem and Antioch and Rome, but not good enough, even as a hornbook,
for me,--the man of the nineteenth century,--the man of Boston, New York,
and Brooklyn! Oh, no. I may think I need it not at all. What next? Why,
sir, if I may think I need not God to teach me moral truth, I may think I
need him not to teach me any thing. What next? The irresistible conclusion
is, I may think I can live without God; that Jehovah is a myth,--a name; I
may bid him stand aside, or die. Oh, sir, _I will be_ the fool to say