and back
again. It must therefore be said very precisely and clearly that the
bankruptcy of Darwinism does not mean that Nobodaddy was Somebodaddy
_with_ 'body, parts, and passions' after all; that the world was made
in the year 4004 B.C.; that damnation means a eternity of blazing
brimstone; that the Immaculate Conception means that sex is sinful and
that Christ was parthenogenetically brought forth by a virgin descended
in like manner from a line of virgins right back to Eve; that the
Trinity is an anthropomorphic monster with three heads which are yet
only one head; that in Rome the bread and wine on the altar become flesh
and blood, and in England, in a still more mystical manner, they do
and they do not; that the Bible is an infallible scientific manual, an
accurate historical chronicle, and a complete guide to conduct; that we
may lie and cheat and murder and then wash ourselves innocent in the
blood of the lamb on Sunday at the cost of a _credo_ and a penny in the
plate, and so on and so forth. Civilization cannot be saved by people
not only crude enough to believe these things, but irreligious enough
to believe that such belief constitutes a religion. The education of
children cannot safely be left in their hands. If dwindling sects like
the Church of England, the Church of Rome, the Greek Church, and the
rest, persist in trying to cramp the human mind within the limits of
these grotesque perversions of natural truths and poetic metaphors, then
they must be ruthlessly banished from the schools until they either
perish in general contempt or discover the soul that is hidden in every
dogma. The real Class War will be a war of intellectual classes; and its
conquest will be the souls of the children.

A TOUCHSTONE FOR DOGMA

The test of a dogma is its universality. As long as the Church of
England preaches a single doctrine that the Brahman, the Buddhist, the
Mussulman, the Parsee, and all the other sectarians who are British
subjects cannot accept, it has no legitimate place in the counsels of
the British Commonwealth, and will remain what it is at present, a
corrupter of youth, a danger to the State, and an obstruction to the
Fellowship of the Holy Ghost. This has never been more strongly felt
than at present, after a war in which the Church failed grossly in the
courage of its profession, and sold its lilies for the laurels of the
soldiers of the Victoria Cross. All the cocks in Christendom have been
crowing