“The seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God; in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor the stranger that is within thy gates.”  This, again, it will be noted, is open to new interpretations.  It specifies maidservants, but does not prevent one’s employing as many married women as he pleases.  It also says nothing about the various kinds of labor-saving machinery which we have now taught to work for us—­sail-boats, naptha launches, yachts, automobiles, and private cars—­all of which may be busily occupied during the seventh day of the week.  The men who run these machines—­the guides, boatmen, stokers, pilots, chauffeurs, and engineers—­would all indignantly resent being regarded as-"servants”, and so they do not come under the prohibition any more than the machines.

“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor’s.”  I read this paragraph over for the first time in quite a while, and I came with a jolt to its last words.  I had been intending to point out that it said nothing about a neighbor’s automobile, nor a neighbor’s oil wells, sugar trusts, insurance companies and savings banks.  The last words, however, stop one of-abruptly.  One is almost tempted to imagine that the Divine Intelligence must have foreseen Dr. Abbott’s ingenious method of interpretation, and taken this precaution against him.  And this was a great surprise to me—­for, truly, I had not supposed it possible that such an interpretation could have been foreseen, even by Omniscience itself.  I will conclude this communication by venturing the assertion that it could not have been foreseen by any other person or thing, in the heavens above, on the earth beneath, or the waters under the earth.  Dr. Abbott may accept my congratulations upon having achieved the most ingenious and masterful exhibition of casuistical legerdemain that it has ever been my fortune to encounter in my readings in the literatures of some thirty centuries and seven different languages.

And I will also add that I respectfully challenge Dr. Abbott to publish this letter.  And I announce to him in advance that if he refuses to publish it, I will cause it to be published upon the first page of the “Appeal to Reason”, where it will be read by some five hundred thousand Socialists, and by them set before several million followers of Jesus Christ, the world’s first and greatest revolutionist, whom Dr. Lyman Abbott has traduced and betrayed by the most amazing piece of theological knavery that it has ever been my fortune to encounter.

#The Octopus#