What about the dark ages which held all Europe for the space of a thousand years in the clutches of an ignorance the like of which no other religion in the world had known?
What about the atrocious inquisition to which no other religion in the world had ever been able to give the swing that Christianity did?
What about the persecution and burning of helpless women as witches?
Is there anything as infamous as that in any religion outside of ours?
What about the wholesale massacres in the name of the true faith?
What about the centuries of religious wars, the most imbecile as well as the most bloody, from the effects of which Germany, France, Italy and England are still suffering today?
And need we also call attention to that obstinate resistance to science and progress, which rewarded every discoverer of a new power for man, with the halter or the stake, which filled the dungeons with the elite of Europe,—which even dug open graves to punish the bones of the dead savants and illuminators of man?
The Pagans, in their gladitorial games, sacrificed the lives of slaves: Christianity made a holocaust of the noblest intellects of Europe.
And shall we speak of the bigotry, the fanaticism, the bitter sectarian prejudices which to this day embitter the life of the world? Are not these, too, the fruits of Christianity?
We know the answer which the reverend gentleman would make to this: "All the evils you speak of are chargeable, not to Christianity, but to its abuse." But we have already shown that that argument won't do. We might as well say that all the evil of Paganism was due to its abuse. The mere fact that Christianity lent itself to such fearful distortions, and was capable of arousing the worst passions in man on such a fearful scale, is condemnation enough. It shows that there was in it a potentiality for evil beyond compare. Moreover, wherein does a "divine" religion differ from a man-made cult, if it is equally powerless to protect itself against perversion? In what sense is Jesus a god, while all his rivals were "mere men," if he is as helpless to prevent the abuse of his teachings as they were? But it would not be difficult to show that the characteristic crimes we have scheduled are the direct inspiration of a religion claiming exclusiveness and infallibility. Such texts as, "there is no other named given under heaven by which men can be saved;" "Let such an one (the man who will not be converted) be like a heathen and a publican to you;" John's advice to refrain from saying "God speed" to the alien in faith; the bible command not to "suffer a witch to live;" and many of the dogmas which might be cited,—corrupted the sympathies, perverted the judgment of the noblest, while at the same time they stung the evil- minded into something like madness. The world knew nothing of the tyranny of dogma, or religious oppression and persecution, comparatively speaking, until the advent of the Jewish-Christian Church.
"Verily I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and of Gomorrah, in the day of judgment, than for that city," said Jesus, speaking of the people who might not accept his teachings. How can Christianity be a religion of love, and how can it believe in tolerance, when it threatens the unbeliever with a fate worse than that of Sodom and Gomorrah?