alt with the Genesis of Christianity; we now come to the
Exodus. For that Christianity can CONTINUE to hold the field of Religion
in the Western World is neither probable nor desirable. It is true, as
I have remarked already, that there is a certain trouble about
defining what we mean by "Christianity" similar to that about the word
"Civilization." If we select out of the great mass of doctrines and
rites favored by the various Christian Churches just those which commend
themselves to the most modern and humane and rational human mind and
choose to call that resulting (but rather small) body of belief and
practice 'Christianity' we are, of course, entitled to do so, and to
hope (as we do hope) that this residuum will survive and go forward into
the future. But this sort of proceeding is hardly fair and certainly not
logical. It enables Christianity to pose as an angel of light while at
the same time keeping discreetly out of sight all its own abominations
and deeds of darkness. The Church--which began its career by destroying,
distorting and denying the pagan sources from which it sprang; whose
bishops and other ecclesiastics assassinated each other in their
theological rancour "of wild beasts," which encouraged the wicked folly
of the Crusades--especially the Children's Crusades--and the shameful
murders of the Manicheans, the Albigenses, and the Huguenots; which
burned at the stake thousands and thousands of poor 'witches' and
'heretics'; which has hardly ever spoken a generous word in favor or
defence of the animals; which in modern times has supported vivisection
as against the latter, Capitalism and Commercialism as against the
poorer classes of mankind; and whose priests in the forms of its various
sects, Greek or Catholic, Lutheran or Protestant, have in these last
days rushed forth to urge the nations to slaughter each other with every
diabolical device of Science, and to glorify the war-cry of Patriotism
in defiance of the principle of universal Brotherhood--such a Church can
hardly claim to have established the angelic character of its mission
among mankind! And if it be said--as it often IS SAID: "Oh! but you must
go back to the genuine article, and the Church's real origin and one
foundation in the person and teaching of Jesus Christ," then indeed you
come back to the point which this book, as above, enforces: namely, that
as to the person of Jesus, there is no CERTAINTY at all that he ever
existed; and as to