the chief merit is that it is the natural fountain of
revolution and reform; and of which the chief defect is that it
is obviously only an abstract assertion. Its main advantage
is that it is the most adventurous and manly of all theologies.
Its chief disadvantage is simply that it is a theology. It can always
be urged against it that it is in its nature arbitrary and in the air.
But it is not so high in the air but that great archers spend their
whole lives in shooting arrows at it--yes, and their last arrows;
there are men who will ruin themselves and ruin their civilization
if they may ruin also this old fantastic tale. This is the last
and most astounding fact about this faith; that its enemies will
use any weapon against it, the swords that cut their own fingers,
and the firebrands that burn their own homes. Men who begin to fight
the Church for the sake of freedom and humanity end by flinging
away freedom and humanity if only they may fight the Church.
This is no exaggeration; I could fill a book with the instances of it.
Mr. Blatchford set out, as an ordinary Bible-smasher, to prove
that Adam was guiltless of sin against God; in manoeuvring so as to
maintain this he admitted, as a mere side issue, that all the tyrants,
from Nero to King Leopold, were guiltless of any sin against humanity.
I know a man who has such a passion for proving that he will have no
personal existence after death that he falls back on the position
that he has no personal existence now. He invokes Buddhism and says
that all souls fade into each other; in order to prove that he
cannot go to heaven he proves that he cannot go to Hartlepool.
I have known people who protested against religious education with
arguments against any education, saying that the child's mind must
grow freely or that the old must not teach the young. I have known
people who showed that there could be no divine judgment by showing
that there can be no human judgment, even for practical purposes.
They burned their own corn to set fire to the church; they smashed
their own tools to smash it; any stick was good enough to beat it with,
though it were the last stick of their own dismembered furniture.
We do not admire, we hardly excuse, the fanatic who wrecks this
world for love of the other. But what are we to say of the fanatic
who wrecks this world out of hatred of the other? He sacrifices
the very existence of humanity to the non-existence of God.
He offers his