524 CHRISTIANITY VERSUS TRUTH. 



prove is this, that even admitting the truth of my 

 propositions, it is an immoral action to give them to 

 the world. On the other hand, I undertake to show 

 that the destruction of Christianity is essential to the 

 interests of civilization; and also that man will never 

 attain his full powers as a moral being until he has 

 ceased to believe in a personal God and in the 

 immortality of the soul. 



" Christianity, we allow, is human in its origin, 

 erroneous in its theories, delusive in its threats 

 and its rewards. Jesus Christ was a man with all 

 the faults and imperfections of the prophetic cha- 

 racter. The Bible is simply a collection of Jewish 

 writings. The miracles in the Old Testament de- 

 serve no more attention from historians than the 

 miracles in Horner. The miracles in the gospels are 

 like the miracles in Plutarch's lives; they do not 

 lessen the value of the biography, and the value of the 

 biography does not lessen the absurdity of the miracles. 

 So far we go with you. But we assert that this 

 religion with all its errors has rendered inestimable 

 services to civilization, and that it is so inseparably 

 associated in the minds of men with purity of life, and 

 the precepts of morality, that it is impossible to attack 

 Christianity without also attacking all that is good, all 

 that is pure, all that is lovely in human nature. 

 When you travelled in Africa did you not join in the 

 sacrifices of the pagans ? "Did you not always speak with 

 respect of their wood spirits and their water spirits, 

 and their gods«of the water and the sky? And did 

 you not take off your shoes when you entered the 

 mosque, and did you not, when they gave you the 

 religious blessing, return the religious reply ? And 

 since you could be so tolerant to savages surely you 



