300 ESSAYS AND LETrERS
man and God say, is also accepted as sacred truth, and the chief aim of the perversion of religion is attained, namely : the concealment of the law of human equality, and even the establishment and assertion of the greatest inequality ; the separation into castes, the separation into chosen people and Gentiles, into orthodox and heretics, saints and sinners. Tliis very thing has occurred and is occurring in Christianity : complete inequality among men has been admitted, and they are divided, not only, with reference to their comprehen- sion of the teaching, into clerics and laity, but, with reference to social position, into those who have power and those who ought to submit to power — which, in accord with the teaching of Paul, is acknowledged as liaving been ordained of God.
Inequality among men, not only as clergy and laity, but also as rich and poor, masters and slaves, is estab- lished by the Church-Christian religion as definitely and glaringly as by other religions. Yet, judging by what we know of Christian teaching in its earliest form in the Gospels, it would seem that the chief methods of perversion made use of in other religions had been fore- seen, and a clear warning against them had been uttered. Against a priestly caste, it was plainly said that no man may be the teacher of another {' Call no man your father — neither be ye called masters '). Against attributing sanctity to books it was said, that the spirit is important, but not the letter, that man should not believe in human traditions, and that all the law and the prophets (that is, all the books regarded as sacred writing) amount only to this, that we should do to others as we wish them to do to us. If nothing is said against miracles, and if in the Gospels themselves miracles are described which Jesus is supposed to have performed, it is, nevertheless, evident from the whole spirit of the teaching, that Jesus based the proof of the validity of his doctrine, not on miracles^ but on the
