Now, when we consider what Christianity has done, we should take account of the evil as well as the good. But this the Christians are unwilling to allow.
Christians declare that the divine origin and truth of their religion are proved by its beneficent results.
But Christianity has done evil as well as good. Mr. G. K. Chesterton, while defending Christianity in the Daily News, said:
Christianity has committed crimes so monstrous that the sun might
sicken at them in heaven.
And no one can refute that statement.
But Christians evade the dilemma. When the evil works of their religion are cited, they reply that those evils were wrought by false Christianity, that they were contrary to the teachings of Christ, and so were not the deeds of Christians at all.
The Christian Commonwealth, in advancing the above plea as to real and false Christianity, instances the difference between Astrology and Astronomy, and said:
We fear Mr. Blatchford, if he has any sense of consistency,
must, when he has finished his tirade against Christianity,
turn his artillery on Greenwich Observatory, and proclaim the
Astronomer Royal a scientific quack, on account of the follies
of star-gazers in the past.
But that parallel is not a true one. Let us suppose that the follies of astrology and the discoveries of astronomy were bound up in one book, and called the Word of God. Let us suppose we were told that the whole book—facts, reason, folly, and falsehoods—was divinely inspired and literally true. Let us suppose that any one who denied the old crude errors of astrology was persecuted as a heretic. Let us suppose that any one denying the theory of Laplace or the theory of Copernicus would be reviled as an "Infidel." Let us suppose that the Astronomer Royal claimed infallibility, not only in matters astronomical, but also in politics and morals. Let us suppose that for a thousand years the astrological-astronomical holy government had whipped, imprisoned, tortured, burnt, hanged, and damned for everlasting every man, woman, or child who dared to tell it any new truth, and that some of the noblest men of genius of all ages had been roasted or impaled alive for being rude to the equator. Let us suppose that millions of pounds were still annually spent on casting nativities, and that thousands of expensive observatories were still maintained at the public cost for astrological rites. Let us suppose all this, and then I should say it would be quite consistent and quite logical for me to turn my verbal artillery on Greenwich Observatory.
Would the Christians listen to such a plea in any other case? Had Socialists been guilty of tyranny, or war, of massacre, or torture, of blind opposition to the truth of science, of cruel persecution of the finest human spirits for fifteen centuries, can anyone believe for a moment that Christians would heed the excuse that the founders of Socialism had not preached the atrocious policy which the established Socialist bodies and the recognised Socialist leaders had put in force persistently during all those hundreds of cruel years?