Christianity will doubtless still survive in the earth ten centuries
hence--stuffed and in a museum. The Church has opposed every innovation and discovery from the day of
Galileo down to our own time, when the use of anesthetic in childbirth
was regarded as a sin because it avoided the biblical curse pronounced
against Eve. And every step in astronomy and geology ever taken has been
opposed by bigotry and superstition. The Greeks surpassed us in artistic
culture and in architecture five hundred years before Christian religion
was born.
|
AI image created by Barbara Schmidt |
One of the most astonishing things that have yet fallen under our observation
is the exceedingly small portion of the earth from which sprang the now
flourishing plant of Christianity. The longest journey our Saviour ever
performed was from here to Jerusalem - about one hundred to one hundred
and twenty miles. The next longest was from here to Sidon - say about
sixty or seventy miles. Instead of being wide apart - as American appreciation
of distances would naturally suggest - the places made most particularly
celebrated by the presence of Christ are nearly all right here in full
view, and within cannon-shot of Capernaum. Leaving out two or three three
short journeys of the Saviour, he spent his life, preached his gospel,
and performed his miracles within a compass no larger than an ordinary
county in the United States. It is as much as I can do to comprehend this
stupefying fact. For England must not fall: it would mean an inundation of Russian &
German political degradations which would envelop the globe & steep
it in a sort of Middle-Age night & slaverly which would last till
Christ comes again--which I hope he will not do; he made trouble enough
before. I bring you the stately matron named Christendom, returning bedraggled,
besmirched, and dishonored, from pirate raids in Kiaochow, Manchuria,
South Africa, and the Philipines, with her soul full of meanness, her
pocket full of boodle, and her mouth full of pious hypocrisies. Give her
soap and towel, but hide the looking glass. Patriotism is a high and holy thing. It will remain a high and holy thing,
and jointly admirable and praiseworthy, Christianity will never change
it. Its noble doctrine of universal brotherhood is for the angels, if
for anybody -- it is not possible for men. Christianity cannot teach a
fish to fly nor aliens to love each other. We can not even imagine a heaven
where there are no frontiers -- where all foreigners -- including Satan's
people -- are brothers, and Patriotism is a vice unknown. ... By the law
of his religion a Christian must labor for the breaking down of all walls
that interrupt the fusion of the race into a common brotherhood, and one
of the most formidable of these is Patriotism; it marches with every frontier
in the world. There has been only one Christian. They caught him and crucified him--early. |
Quotations | Newspaper Articles | Special Features | Links | Search