DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 525 



are bound to be more tolerant still to those who belong 

 to your own race, to those who possess a nobler religion, 

 and whose minds can be made by a careless word 

 to suffer the most exquisite pain. Yet you attack 

 Christianity, and you attack it in the wrong way. 

 You ought, in the interests of your own cause, to write 

 in such a manner that minds might be gradually trained 

 to reflection, and decoyed to doubt. It is not only 

 heartless and inhuman, it is also unwise, it is also 

 unscientific to say things which will shock and disgust 

 those who are beginning to inquire, and it is bad taste 

 to jest on subjects which if not sacred in themselves 

 are held sacred in the eyes of many thoughtful and cul- 

 tivated men. You ought to adopt a tone of reluctance 

 and to demonstrate, as it were against your will, the 

 errors of the popular religion. Believers at least have 

 a right to demand tbat if you discuss these questions 

 upon which their hopes of eternal happiness are based, 

 you will do so with gravity and decorum." 



To this I reply that the religion of the Africans, 

 whether pagan or nioslem, is suited to their intellects, 

 and is therefore a true religion ; and the same may be 

 said of Christianity amongst uneducated people. But 

 Christianity is not in accordance with the cultivated 

 mind ; it can only be accepted or rather retained by 

 suppressing doubts, and by denouncing inquiry as sin- 

 ful. It is therefore a superstition, and ought to be 

 destroyed. With respect to the services which it once 

 rendered to civilisation, I cheerfully acknowledge them, 

 but the same argument might once have been advanced 

 in favour of the oracle at Delphi, without which there 

 would have been no Greek culture, and therefore no 

 Christianity. The question is not whether Christianity 

 assisted the civilisation of our ancestors, but whether 



