n this
article to show that the idea of our common humanity is not "a purely
Christian conception," that it arose in the natural course of human
development, and that in this, as in other cases, the apologists of
Christianity have simply appropriated to their own creed the fruits of
the political, social, and moral growth of Western civilisation.

THE SONS OF GOD.

"The sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair."
--Genesis vi. 8.

According to the first book of the Bible, the earth fell into a very
wicked condition in the days of the patriarchs. God made everything
good, but the Devil turned everything bad; and in the end the Lord
put the whole concern into liquidation. It was a case of universal
bankruptcy. All that was saved out of the catastrophe was a consignment
of eight human beings and an unknown number of elephants, crocodiles,
horses, pigs, dogs, cats, and fleas.

Among other enormities of the antediluvian world was the fondness shown
by the sons of God for the daughters of men. That fondness has continued
ever since. The deluge itself could not wash out the amatory feelings
with which the pious males regard those fair creatures who were once
supposed to be the Devil's chief agents on earth. Even to this day it
is a fact that courtship goes on with remarkable briskness in religious
circles. Churches and chapels are places of harmless assignation, and
how many matches are made in Sunday-schools, where Alfred and Angelina
meet to teach the scripture and flirt. As for the clergy, who are
peculiarly the sons of God, they are notorious for their partiality to
the sex. They purr about the ladies like black tom-cats. Some of them
are adepts in the art of rolling one eye heavenwards and letting the
other languish on the fair faces of the daughters of men. It is also
noticeable that the Protestant clericals marry early and often, and
generally beget a numerous progeny; while the Catholic priest who, being
strictly celibate, _never_ adds to the population, "mashes" the ladies
through the confessional, worming out all their secrets, and making them
as pliable as wax in his holy hands. Too often the professional son of
God is a chartered libertine, whose amors are carried on under a veil of
sanctity. What else, indeed, could be expected when a lot of lusty
young fellows, in the prime of life, foreswear marriage, take vows of
chastity, and undertake to stem the current of their natures by