Would the Christian hearken to such a defence from a Socialist, or from a Mohammedan? Would a Liberal accept it from a Tory? Would a Roman Catholic admit it from a Jew?
Neither is it right to claim credit for the good deeds, and to avoid responsibility for the evil deeds of the divine religion.
And the fact must be insisted upon, that all religion, in its very nature, makes for persecution and oppression. It is the assumption that it is wicked to doubt the accepted faith and the presumption that one religion ought to revenge or justify its God upon another religion, that leads to all the pious crimes the world groans and bleeds for.
This is seen in the Russian outrages on the Jews, and in the Moslem outrages upon the Macedonians to-day. It is religious fanaticism that lights and fans and feeds the fire. Were all the people in the world of one, or of no, religion to-day, there would be no Jews murdered by Christians and no Christians murdered by Moslems in the East. The cause of the atrocities would be gone. The cause is religion.
Why is religious intolerance so much more fierce and bitter than political intolerance? Just because it is religious. It is the supernatural element that breeds the fury. It is the feeling that their religion is divine and all other religions wicked: it is the belief that it is a holy thing to be "jealous for the Lord," that drives men into blind rage and ruthless savagery.
We have to regard two things at once, then: the good influences of Christ's ethics, and the evil deeds of those who profess to be His followers.
As to what some Christians call "the Christianity of Christ," I suggest that the teachings of Christ were imperfect and inadequate. That they contain some moral lessons I admit. But some of the finest and most generally admired of those lessons do not appear to have been spoken by Christ, and for the rest there is nothing in His ethics that had not been taught by men before, and little that has not been extended or improved by men since His era.
The New Testament, considered as a moral and spiritual guide for mankind, is unsatisfactory. For it is based upon an erroneous estimate of human nature and of God.
I am sure that it would be easy to compile a book more suitable to the needs of Man. I think it is a gross blunder to assume that all the genius, all the experience, all the discovery and research; all the poetry, morality, and science of the entire human race during the past eighteen hundred years have failed to add to or improve the knowledge and morality of the first century.
Mixed with much that is questionable or erroneous, the New Testament contains some truth and beauty. Amid the perpetration of much bloodshed and tyranny, Christianity has certainly achieved some good. I should not like to say of any religion that all its works were evil. But Christ's message, as we have it in the Gospels, is neither clear nor sufficing, and has been obscured, and, at times almost obliterated, by the pomps and casuistries of the schools and churches. And just as it is difficult to discover the actual Jesus among the conflicting Gospel stories of His works and words, so it is almost impossible to discover the genuine authentic Christian religion amid the swarm of more or less antagonistic sects who confound the general ear with their discordant testimonies.