4. That it is “safest to believe.”—If this proves anything it proves too much. If our future (if we have one) can be rendered more secure by pretending to believe when we do not, then the Protestant should accept Catholicism, and the Catholic, Protestantism, while the members of every sect should believe all that is taught by all other sectarists and Christians of every school should believe all that is contained in the sacred books of other religions.
5. That we hurt the feelings of those who cherish the old faith.—Why should the Christian complain that we disturb settled convictions and cut loose the anchored bark of faith? Has not Christianity ever been a missionary religion? It seeks to disturb the religion of the whole world. Christians attack all religions other than their own—our offence is that we include Christianity in the category of false faiths. (Lucifer.)
“All Owing to the Bible.”
“It is a very common argument with Christians, that only those nations which have had the Bible are refined, civilized and learned. The following is the boastful manner in which Christians set forth the claims of their religion: “Take a map of the world, draw a line around those countries that have enjoyed the highest degree of refinement, and you will encircle just those nations that have received the Bible as their authority in religion.” In refutation of this assumption Horace Seaver writes: “From this language the plain inference is, that those nations have been indebted to the influence of the Bible for the positions to which they have attained. Let us follow out a little this line of argument and see where it will lead.
“The ancient Egyptians stood as far in advance of their contemporaries as do the nations of Christendom at the present day, as the remains of their cities and temples fully attest. And if the argument is good, they were indebted for that superiority to their worship of cats, crocodiles, and onions!
“The ancient Greek might have exclaimed, as he beheld the proud position to which Greece attained—‘See what we owe to a belief in our glorious mythology; we have reached the highest point of enlightenment the world has ever witnessed; we stand unequaled in power, wealth, the cultivation of the arts, and all that makes a nation refined, polished, and great!’
“How immeasurably would his faith in the elevating tendency of his religion have been increased could he have looked with prophetic eye into the distant ages of the future, and beheld the enlightened and Christianized nations of the nineteenth century adopting the remains of Grecian architecture, sculpture, painting, oratory, music and literature as their models! Pagan Rome, too, once mistress of the world and arbitress of nations—the home of philosophers and sages—the land in which the title ‘I am a Roman citizen,’ was the proudest that mortal could wear—Rome, by the above Christian argument, should have ascribed all her honor, praise, and glory to her mythology.
“The Turk and the Saracen, likewise, have had their day of power and renown. Bagdad was the seat of science and learning at a time when the nations of Europe were sunk in darkness and superstition. The Turk and Saracen should have pointed to the Koran as the source of their refinement.
“Thus we see that the Christian argument we are noticing, if it proves anything, it proves too much. If the nations of Christendom are indebted to the Bible for their enlightenment, likewise were the Egyptians indebted to their cat and crocodile and onion worship, the Greeks and Romans to their mythology and the Turks and Saracens to their Koran.”—Seaver.