54 THE GREATEST ILLUSION 



way of relieving Christianity of the accumulated load of 

 crime and error. At the same time it is a surrender of the 

 traditional claim to saving grace. In mitigation of this 

 surrender we are told, however, that the convictions which 

 led to centuries of persecution and suppression of knowledge 

 were not genuine Christianity. Augustine, Jerome, and all 

 the Fathers were not Christians ; Luther, Calvin, Knox, and 

 other great religious leaders were fundamentally mistaken in 

 their reading of the Gospels. It has taken the world two 

 thousand years of religious wars, holy persecution, and pious 

 suppression of science to appreciate the real meaning of the 

 message which ex hypothesi brought healing light to blind 

 and suffering humanity. 



Such is the casuistry of the modern apologist. And if we 

 invite him to define this essential Christianity which has been 

 overlooked by generations of scholarship and God-given 

 insight, we get a different answer for every sect and every 

 section of a sect. 



Essential Christianity is anything, from the dogmas of the 

 Catholic Church to those humanist and practical ideals which 

 the Catholic Church describes as " dreary morality" and 

 " drains." It is all things to all men. And as theoretical 

 Christianity suffers from a chaos of apostles, we are forced to 

 a study of modern applied Christianity in order to discover 

 whether the unique and transcendent message is visible in 

 action. At this point, however, it is vital to note that most 

 of the Churches have become ashamed of a doctrine which 

 was preached by all of them with complete conviction a 

 generation ago. To our immediate forefathers, hell was an 

 essential feature of the Christian message ; it was the neces- 

 sary obverse of the scheme of salvation, and it was derived 

 straight from the Gospels. How, then, can we accept the 

 view that real Christianity begins with regarding this doctrine 

 as a conception too vile for any civilized being to entertain for 

 a moment? The doctrine, by the way, remains in the Creeds ; 

 it is still part of official Christianity, and is an abomina- 

 tion which no amount of re-interpretation can sweeten to 

 innocence. 



However much the dogmas of Christianity may have been 

 cut and trimmed, the plant still casts the traditional seeds of 

 strife and pain. This is not a picturesque exaggeration ; it 

 is a plain statement of fact. A few years ago the " Big 

 Frees " and the " Wee Frees " both zealous Christians and 

 indistinguishable in their dogmas engaged in a prolonged 



