377. General Joshua

My own opinion is that General Joshua knew no more about the motions of the earth than he did mercy and justice. If he had known that the earth turned upon its axis at the rate of a thousand miles an hour, and swept in its course about the sun at the rate of sixty-eight thousand miles an hour, he would have doubled the hailstones, spoken of in the same chapter, that the Lord cast down from heaven, and allowed the sun and moon to rise and set in the usual way.

378. Early Rising is Barbaric!

This getting up so early in the morning is a relic of barbarism. It has made hundreds of thousands of young men curse business. There is no need of getting up at three or four o'clock in the winter morning. The farmer who persists in dragging his wife and children from their beds ought to be visited by a missionary. It is time enough to rise after the sun has set the example. For what purpose do you get up? To feed the cattle? Why not feed them more the night before? It is a waste of life. In the old times they used to get up about three o'clock in the morning, and go to work long before the sun had risen with "healing upon his wings," and as a just punishment they all had the ague; and they ought to have it now.

379. Sleep is Medicine!

You should not rob your families of sleep. Sleep is the best medicine in the world. There is no such thing as health, without plenty of sleep.

Sleep until you are thoroughly rented and restored. When you work, work; and when you get through take a good, long and refreshing sleep.

380. Never Rise at Four O'Clock

The man who cannot get a living upon Illinois soil without rising before daylight ought to starve. Eight hours a day is enough for any farmer to work except in harvest time. When you rise at four and work till dark what is life worth? Of what use are all the improvements in farming?

Of what use is all the improved machinery unless it tends to give the farmer a little more leisure? What is harvesting now, compared with what it was in the old time? Think of the days of reaping, of cradling, of raking and binding and mowing. Think of threshing with the flail and winnowing with the wind. And now think of the reapers and mowers, the binders and threshing machines, the plows and cultivators, upon which the farmer rides protected from the sun. If, with all these advantages, you cannot get a living without rising in the middle of the night, go into some other business.

381. The Hermit is Mad

A hermit is a mad man. Without friends and wife and child, there is nothing left worth living for. The unsocial are the enemies of joy. They are filled with egotism and envy, with vanity and hatred. People who live much alone become narrow and suspicious. They are apt to be the property of one idea. They begin to think there is no use in anything.

They look upon the happiness of others as a kind of folly. They hate joyous folks, because, way down in their hearts, they envy them.

382. Duke Orang-Outang

I think we came from the lower animals. I am not dead sure of it, but think so. When I first read about it I didn't like it. My heart was filled with sympathy for those people who leave nothing to be proud of except ancestors. I thought how terrible this will be upon the n.o.bility of the old world. Think of their being forced to trace their ancestry back to the Duke Orang-Outang or to the Princess Chimpanzee. After thinking it all over I came to the conclusion that I liked that doctrine. I became convinced in spite of myself. I read about rudimentary bones and muscles. I was told that everybody had rudimentary muscles extending from the ear into the cheek. I asked: "What are they?"

I was told: "They are the remains of muscles; they became rudimentary from the lack of use." They went into bankruptcy. They are the muscles with which your ancestors used to flap their ears. Well, at first I was greatly astonished, and afterward I was more astonished to find they had become rudimentary.

383. Self-Made Men

It is often said of this or that man that he is a self-made man--that he was born of the poorest and humblest parents, and that with every obstacle to overcome he became great. This is a mistake. Poverty is generally an advantage. Most of the intellectual giants of the world have been nursed at the sad but loving breast of poverty. Most of those who have climbed highest on the shining ladder of fame commenced at the lowest round. They were reared in the straw thatched cottages of Europe; in the log houses of America; in the factories of the great cities; in the midst of toil; in the smoke and din of labor.

384. The One Window in the Ark

A cubit is twenty-two inches; so that the ark was five hundred and fifty feet long, ninety-one feet and eight inches wide, and fifty-five feet high. The ark was divided into three stories, and had on top, one window twenty-two inches square. Ventillation must have been one of Jehovah's hobbies. Think of a ship larger than the Great Eastern with only one window, and that but twenty-two inches square!

385. No Ante-Diluvian Camp-Meetings!

It is a little curious that when G.o.d wished to reform the ante-diluvian world he said nothing about h.e.l.l; that he had no revivals, no camp-meetings, no tracts, no out-pourings of the Holy Ghost, no baptisms, no noon prayer meetings, and never mentioned the great doctrine of salvation by faith. If the orthodox creeds of the world are true, all those people went to h.e.l.l without ever having heard that such a place existed. If eternal torment is a fact, surely these miserable wretches ought to have been warned. They were threatened only with water when they were in fact doomed to eternal fire!

386. Hard Work in the Ark

Eight persons did all the work. They attended to the wants of 175,000 birds, 3,616 beasts, 1,300 reptiles, and 2,000,000 insects, saying nothing of countless animalculae.

387. What did Moses know about the Sun?

Can we believe that the inspired writer had any idea of the size of the sun? Draw a circle five inches in diameter, and by its side thrust a pin through the paper. The hole made by the pin will sustain about the same relation to the circle that the earth does to the sun. Did he know that the sun was eight hundred and sixty thousand miles in diameter; that it was enveloped in an ocean of fire thousands of miles in depth, hotter even than the Christian's h.e.l.l? Did he know that the volume of the Earth is less than one-millionth of that of the sun? Did he know of the one hundred and four planets belonging to our solar system, all children of the sun? Did he know of Jupiter eighty-five thousand miles in diameter, hundreds of times as large as our earth, turning on his axis at the rate of twenty-five thousand miles an hour accompanied by four moons making the tour of his...o...b..t once only in fifty years?

388. Something for Nothing

It is impossible for me to conceive of something being created for nothing. Nothing, regarded in the light of raw material, is a decided failure. I cannot conceive of matter apart from force. Neither is it possible to think of force disconnected with matter. You cannot imagine matter going back to absolute nothing. Neither can you imagine nothing being changed into something. You may be eternally d.a.m.ned if you do not say that you can conceive these things, but you cannot conceive them.

Account but I cannot help it. In my judgment Moses was mistaken.

389. Polygamy

Polygamy is just as pure in Utah as it could have been in the promised land. Love and virtue are the same the whole world around, and justice is the same in every star. All the languages of the world are not sufficient to express the filth of polygamy. It makes of man a beast, of woman a trembling slave. It destroys the fireside, makes virtue an outcast, takes from human speech its sweetest words, and leaves the heart a den, where crawl and hiss the slimy serpents of most loathsome l.u.s.t. Civilization rests upon the family. The good family is the unit of good government. The virtues grow about the holy hearth of home--they cl.u.s.ter, bloom, and shed their perfume round the fireside where the one man loves the one woman.

Lover--husband--wife--mother--father--child--home!--without these sacred words the world is but a lair, and men and women merely beasts.