302 ESSAYS AND LETTERS
And so all the three former methods of perverting religion — a priestliood^ miracles, and the infallibility of scriptures — were admitted in full force into Christianity. Intermediaries between God and man were admitted because the need and fitness of having such inter- mediaries was recognised by the Church ; the validity of miracles was acknowledged because the infallible Church testified to them ; and the sanctity of the Bible was acknowledged because it was acknowledged by the Church.
And Christianity was perverted as all other religions had been, but with this difference, that just because Christianity most clearly proclaimed its fundamental principle — the equality of all men as sons of God — it was necessary most forcibly to pervert its whole teach- ing, in order to hide this fundamental principle. And by the help of this conception of a Church, this has been done to a greater extent than in any other religion. So that really no religion has ever preached things so evidently incompatible with reason and with contem- porary knowledge, or so immoral, as the doctrines preached by Church-Christianity. Not to speak of all the absurdities of the Old Testament, such as the creation of light before tlie sun, the creation of the world six thousand years ago, the housing of all the animals in the Ark ; or of tlie many immoral horrors, such as injunctions to massacre children and whole populations at God's command ; not to speak even of the absurd Sacrament of which 'oltaire used to say, that though there have been and are many absurd religious doctrines, there never before was one in which the chief act of religion consisted in eating one's own God, — not to dwell on all that, what can be more absurd than that the Mother of God was both a mother and a virgin ; that the sky opened and a voice spoke from up there ; that Christ flew into the sky and sits somewhere up there at the right hand of his father ; or that God is both One and Three, not three Gods like Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, but One and yet Three ? And what can be more immoral than the terrible
