People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 March 1894 — Christianity So-called. [ARTICLE]

Christianity So-called.

And just as Lucretius was right in exclaiming that a tbmg which called itself “religion’’ had been the prolific mother of many a deadly curse, so many modern students have been right in maintaining that something which called itself Christ’ ianity—something which priests would fain have passed off for Christianity; something which theologians have taught as Christianity, but which was not Christianity at all, and was, in point of fact, alien from its most essential attributes—had done incredible harm to mankind. In what respect is the cause of “pure religion and undefiled” injured or weakened by our free admission that the names of religion and of Christianity have been grossly abused to the perpetration of innumerable wrongs? “O Freedom!” exclaimed Madame Roland, “what crimes are committed in thy name!” Was her cry a condemnation of freedom? Does the cause of virtue suffer from the fact that the worst ends of vice and falsity are often promoted by men who call themselves the servants of virtue, and wear the cloak of profession “doubly lined with the fox-fur of hypocrisy?” Is the majesty of duty impaired when men use her name as a covering of maliciousness, and obtrude her commandments as an excuse for gratifying their own vindictive rage? No! Religion, Christianity, Freedom, Virtue, Duty—they are eternal entities. Men may deface their true semblance; they might as well throw dust at heaven, in hope of staining it, as endeavor to obliterate the shining ideal o! these great guardian angels of mankind.—From an article on “Christianity—True and False,” by Archdeacon Farrar, in McClure’s Magazine for April.