95 THE DOCTRINE OF DESCENT 



Nothing, perhaps, shows so plainly as the history of 

 Christianity how little theory and practice harmonise 

 in human life ; how little pains are taken, even by 

 those whose calling it is to uphold established doc- 

 trines, to apply their natural consequences to practical 

 life. The Christian religion, no doubt, as well as the 

 Buddhist, when stripped of all dogmatic and fabulous 

 nonsense, contains an admirable human kernel, and 

 precisely that human portion of Christian teaching 

 in the best sense social-democratic which preaches 

 the equality of all men before God, the loving of your 

 neighbour as yourself, love in general in the noblest 

 sense, a fellow-feeling with the poor and wretched, and 

 so forth precisely, those truly human sides of the 

 Christian doctrine are so natural, so noble, so pure, 

 that we unhesitatingly adopt them into the moral doc- 

 trine of our monistic natural religion. Nay, the social 

 instincts of the higher animals on which we found this 

 religion (for instance the marvellous sense of duty of 

 ants, &c.) are in this best sense strictly Christian. 



And what we may ask what have the professed 

 supporters, the " learned divines " of this religion of 

 love done ? Their deeds are written in letters of blood 

 in the history of the civilisation of mankind during 

 the last 1800 years. All else that differing church- 

 religions have accomplished for the forcible extension 

 of their doctrines and for the extirpation of heretics of 



