A single precept of Christ's, "Take no thought for the morrow," has bred swarms of mendicants in every age since this day; but a far more dangerous precept is "Resist not evil," which has made Christianity welcome to so many tyrants. Christ, whatever other sentiments he had, had a slave heart. Every friend of freedom knows that "resistance is the backbone of the world." The patriot poet* exclaims:
"Land of our Fathers—in their hour of need
God help them, guarded by the passive creed."
* Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes.
No miracle could make these precepts true, and he who proved their authenticity would be the enemy of mankind.
Whether Christ existed or not affects in no way what excellence and inimitableness there was in his delineated character. His offer of palpable materialistic evidence to Thomas showed that he recognised the right of scepticism to relevant satisfaction. His concession of proof in this case needed no supernatural testimony to render it admirable.
The reader will now see what the policy of Secularist advocacy is,—mainly to test theology by its ethical import. To many all policy is restraint; they cry down policy, and erect blundering into a virtue.
Whereas policy is guidance to a chosen end. Mathematics is but the policy of measurement; grammar but the policy of speech; logic but the policy of reason; arithmetic but the policy of calculation; temperance but the policy of health; trigonometry but the policy of navigation; roads but the policy of transit; music but the policy of controlling sound; art but the policy of beauty; law but the policy of protection; discipline but the policy of strength; love but the policy of affection. An enemy may object to an adversary having a policy, because he is futile without one. The policy adopted may be bad, but no policy at all is idiocy, and commits a cause to the providence of Bedlam.
CHAPTER XIX. APART FROM CHRISTIANISM
"What is written by Moses can only be read by God."
—Bikar Proverb.
SECULARISM differs from Christianism in so far as it accepts only the teachings which pertain to man, and which are consonant with reason and experience.