Truth is born where men are allowed to think and speak their thoughts. Error can not be maintained where man is permitted to ask questions. The only way to preserve Christianity is to put it in a tin can and have it hermetically sealed.
We are getting a new examination of the universe as a basis for our philosophy. The telescope has afforded man visions far beyond the seventh heaven of the Apocalypse. The genesis of things is found to lie millions of years back of the Genesis of the Bible. The chaos out of which this world was made has been discovered to be a previous state of existence.
Science is laying the new foundation for our faith, and knowledge is building the new temple of the mind.
Men and women everywhere are stating their opinions, and the world recognizes that there is to be a religious controversy upon this earth which will shake to its base everything that is not true. Not one stone of falsehood will be left standing upon another. Every dogma of superstition must find a grave, and truth alone be reverenced by man.
The world has taken a step forward of Christianity, and in its march of advancement has left behind the Christian God, the Christian Savior, the Christian Bible, and the Christian Faith. But the world will not stop here. It must go further. The question which the human mind wants answered today is this: Is the decay of Christian theology to be followed by the decay of Christian morality?
I think that it is, and I also think that this morality is about as near dead now as it can be.
It is true that the author of this morality is painted in divine colors for human adoration Sunday after Sunday, and that his other-world ethics are inculcated by the pulpit; but beyond these attempts to give the peculiar moral teachings of Jesus the show of life, there is absolutely no sign of them in the world of man.
The morality of the Christian system is not designed for humanity in its present condition, nor does it possess the elements necessary to make man into the image of any higher virtue. It is, in fact, an unreal, unnatural morality which Jesus taught, and the notion that men and women do not practise it because it is too far above them, depends upon an estimate of this morality which we are not willing to allow.