451. The Morality in Christianity
The morality in Christianity has never opposed the freedom of thought. It has never put, nor tended to put, a chain on a human mind, nor a manacle on a human limb; but the doctrines distinctively Christian—the necessity of believing a certain thing; the idea that eternal punishment awaited him who failed to believe; the idea that the innocent can suffer for the guilty—these things have |opposed, and for a thousand years substantially destroyed the freedom of the human mind. All religions have, with ceremony, magic, and mystery, deformed, darkened, and corrupted, the soul. Around the sturdy oaks of morality have grown and clung the parasitic, poisonous vines of the miraculous and monstrous.