THE STRENGTH OF ISLAM
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unnecessary dogmas, and lead us to the selection of a faith or Religion in which the fewest improbabilities and fairy tales appear.
The "virgin birth" and "dying God," for example, are not peculiar to Christianity; they are to be traced backwards to periods thousands of years before the time of Christ. Why, then, make a belief in them the most important foundation-stone in the Christian belief? Why allow such figments of paganism to be held up as "necessary to salvation"? I venture to say that if one could probe into the innermost thoughts of any congregation in any church one would find a very small percentage having faith in the truth of the words uttered by the lips. The parson, being an educated man, would hardly ever be found with a true belief that the Almighty and Merciful was daily dispensing injustice with the lavish hand suggested by the words of the Christian Creed. As a man he knows that the words are but a cloak to what is hollow and insincere, but, in his capacity as a priest, he is bound by his vows to pretend that he believes in the fables. You have spoken of my having "stepped into heathendom," and you use the analogy of the difficulty of "making a silk purse out of a sow's ear," and now you suggest that I should turn to Jesus in order to be able to talk about angels and bright shining garments. You have disregarded the fact that we altogether disclaim any pretensions to being "heathens." You have quite mistaken what Islam really is. We are devout and earnest believers in the One
