"Then I must talk more. Now, sir, for God's sake let us have the plain truth of the crucifixion. Where was the sacrifice? Can you not picture the mob that would fight for the honour of crucifixion to-morrow, if it were known that the one chosen would sit at the right hand of God and judge all the world? I say there was no sacrifice, even if Christian dogma be literal truth. Why, sir, I could go into the street and find ten men in ten minutes who would be crucified a hundred times to save the souls of us from hell—not if they were to be rewarded with a seat on the throne of God where they could send into hell those who did not believe in them—but for no reward whatever—out of a sheer love for humanity. Don't you see, sir, that we have magnified that crucifixion out of all proportion to the plainest truth of our lives? You know I would die on a cross to-day, not to redeem the world, but to redeem one poor soul—your own. If you deny that, at least you won't dare deny that you would go on the cross to redeem my soul from hell—the soul of one man—and do you think you would demand a reward for doing it, beyond knowing that you had ransomed me from torment? Would it be necessary to your happiness that you also have the power to send into hell all those who were not able to believe you had actually died for me?
"One moment more, sir—" The thin, brown, old hand had been raised in trembling appeal, while the lips moved without sound.
"You see every day in the papers how men die for other men, for one man, for two, a dozen! Why, sir, you know you would die to save the lives of five little children—their bare carnal lives, mind you, to say nothing of their immortal souls. I believe I'd die myself to save two thousand—I know I would to save three—if their faces were clean and they looked funny enough and helpless. Here, in this morning's paper, a negro labourer, going home from his work in New York yesterday, pushed into safety one of those babies that are always crawling around on railroad tracks. He had time to see that he could get the baby off but not himself, and then he went ahead. Doubtless it was a very common baby, and certainly he was a very common man. Why, I could go down to Sing Sing to-morrow, and I'll stake my own soul that in the whole cageful of criminals there isn't one who would not eagerly submit to crucifixion if he believed that he would thereby ransom the race from hell. And he wouldn't want the power to damn the unbelievers, either. He would insist upon saving them with the others."
"Oh, God, forgive this insane passion in my boy!"
"It was passion, sir—" he spoke with a sudden relenting—"but try to remember that I've sought the truth honestly."
"You degrade the Saviour."
"No; I only raise man out of the muck of Christian belief about him. If common men all might live lives of greater sacrifice than Jesus did, without any pretensions to the supernatural, it only means that we need a new embodiment for our ideals. If we find it in man—in God's creature—so much the better for man and so much the more glory to God, who has not then bungled so wretchedly as Christianity teaches."
"God forgive you this tirade—I know it is the sickness."
"I shall try to speak calmly, sir—but how much longer can an educated clergy keep a straight face to speak of this wretchedly impotent God? Christians of a truth have had to bind their sense of humour as the Chinese bound their women's feet. But the laugh is gathering even now. Your religion is like a tree that has lain long dead in the forest—firm wood to the eye but dust to the first blow. And this is how it will go—from a laugh—not through the solemn absurdities of the so-called higher criticism, the discussing of this or that miracle, the tracing of this or that myth of fall or deluge or immaculate conception or trinity to its pagan sources; not that way, when before the inquiring mind rises the sheer materialism of the Christian dogma, bristling with absurdities—its vain bungling God of one tribe who crowns his career of impotencies—in all but the art of slaughter—by instituting the sacrifice of a Son begotten of a human mother, to appease his wrath toward his own creatures; a God who even by this pitiful device can save but a few of us. Was ever god so powerless? Do you think we who grow up now do not detect it? Is it not time to demand a God of virtue, of integrity, of ethical dignity—a religion whose test shall be moral, and not the opinion one forms of certain alleged material phenomena?"
When he had first spoken the old man cowered low and lower in his chair, with little moans of protest at intervals, perhaps a quick, almost gasping, "God forgive him!" or a "Lord have mercy!" But as the talk went on he became slowly quieter, his face grew firmer, he sat up in his chair, and at the last he came to bend upon the speaker a look that made him falter confusedly and stop.