766 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the man was brought up in a Christian household or not. I do 

 not see why it should be " unpleasant " for a Mohammedan or a 

 Buddhist to say so. But that " it ought to be " unpleasant for any 

 man to say anything which he sincerely, and after due delibera- 

 tion, believes, is, to my mind, a proposition of the most pro- 

 foundly immoral character. I verily believe that the great good 

 which has been effected in the world by Christianity has been 

 largely counteracted by the pestilent doctrine on which all the 

 churches have insisted, that honest disbelief in their more or less 

 astonishing creeds is a moral offense, indeed a sin of the deepest 

 dye, deserving and involving the same future retribution as mur- 

 der and robbery. If we could only see, in one view, the torrents 

 of hypocrisy and cruelty, the lies, the slaughter, the violations 

 of every obligation of humanity, which have flowed from this 

 source along the course of the history of Christian nations, our 

 worst imaginations of hell would pale beside the vision. 



A thousand times, no ! It ought not to be unpleasant to say 

 that which one honestly believes or disbelieves. That it so con- 

 stantly is painful to do so, is quite enough obstacle to the progress 

 of mankind in that most valuable of all qualities, honesty of word 

 or of deed, without erecting a sad concomitant of human weak- 

 ness into something to be admired and cherished. The bravest of 

 soldiers often, and very naturally, " feel it unpleasant " to go into 

 action ; but a court-martial which did its duty would make short 

 work of the officer who promulgated the doctrine that his men 

 ouglit to feel their duty unpleasant. 



I am very well aware, as I suppose most thoughtful people are 

 in these times, that the process of breaking away from old beliefs 

 is extremely unpleasant ; and I am much disposed to think that 

 the encouragement, the consolation, and the peace afforded to 

 earnest believers in even the worst forms of Christianity are of 

 great practical advantage to them. What deductions must be 

 made from this gain on the score of the harm done to the citizen 

 by the ascetic other-worldliness of logical Christianity; to the 

 ruler, by the hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness of sectarian 

 bigotry ; to the legislator, by the spirit of exclusiveness and dom- 

 ination of those that count themselves pillars of orthodoxy ; to 

 the philosopher, by the restraints on the freedom of learning and 

 teaching which every church exercises, when it is strong enough ; 

 to the conscientious soul, by the introspective hunting after sins 

 of the mint and cummin type, the fear of theological error, 

 and the overpowering terror of jjossible damnation, which have 

 accompanied the churches like their shadow, I need not now con- 

 sider ; but they are assuredly not small. If agnostics lose heavily 

 on the one side, they gain a good deal on the other. People who 

 talk about the comforts of belief appear to forget its discomforts ; 



