The assumption that Christianity is a thing of the past can hardly be more prevalent now than it was then; and the groundlessness of the assumption then may lead to the conclusion that the assumption is equally groundless now. Since the days of Butler or of Swift, the progress of Christianity has not ceased: its developments of thought and life have been among the most remarkable in its whole career. The exultation over its decay in the twentieth century may possibly be found as premature and as vain as the exultation over its decay in the eighteenth century, or in any of the centuries which have gone before.
III
The most popular impeachments of Christianity are mainly these.
It is a mass of false and superstitious beliefs long exploded. It is the opponent of progress and inquiry, the discoveries of science having been made in direct defiance of its teaching and its influence.
It is the champion of oppression and tyranny. It aims at keeping the poor in ignorance and destitution. It prostrates itself before the rich and seeks the patronage of the great.
It so insists on people being absorbed in the thought of heaven that it practically precludes them from doing any good on earth.
It is a system of selfishness, inculcating the dogma that no one need care for anything except the salvation of his own soul.[[11]]
It is the foster-mother of all the evil and misery by which society is distressed. Dishonesty, cruelty, slavery, war, persecution, avarice, drunkenness, vice, would seem to be its natural fruits.
'How calm and sweet the victories of life,'
shrieked Shelley in one of his early poems.