Again there are some who write us that our work is a useless
expenditure of force over a book that has lost its hold on the human
mind. Most intelligent women, they say, regard it simply as the history
of a rude people in a barbarous age, and have no more reverence for the
Scriptures than any other work. So long as tens of thousands of Bibles
are printed every year, and circulated over the whole habitable globe,
and the masses in all English-speaking nations revere it as the word of
God, it is vain to belittle its influence. The sentimental feelings we
all have for those things we were educated to believe sacred, do not
readily yield to pure reason. I distinctly remember the shudder that
passed over me on seeing a mother take our family Bible to make a high
seat for her child at table. It seemed such a desecration. I was
tempted to protest against its use for such a purpose, and this,
too, long after my reason had repudiated its divine authority.

To women still believing in the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures,
we say give us by all means your exegesis in the light of the higher
criticism learned men are now making, and illumine the Woman's Bible,
with your inspiration.

Bible historians claim special inspiration for the Old and New
Testaments containing most contradictory records of the same events, of
miracles opposed to all known laws, of customs that degrade the female
sex of all human and animal life, stated in most questionable language
that could not be read in a promiscuous assembly, and call all this
"The Word of God."

The only points in which I differ from all ecclesiastical teaching is
that I do not believe that any man ever saw or talked with God, I do