Now it is evident that two religions having such contrary effects on
mankind should not be confused as they are under a common name. There is
not one word of Pauline Christianity in the characteristic utterances of
Jesus. When Saul watched the clothes of the men who stoned Stephen, he
was not acting upon beliefs which Paul renounced. There is no record of
Christ's having ever said to any man: "Go and sin as much as you like:
you can put it all on me." He said "Sin no more," and insisted that he
was putting up the standard of conduct, not debasing it, and that
the righteousness of the Christian must exceed that of the Scribe and
Pharisee. The notion that he was shedding his blood in order that every
petty cheat and adulterator and libertine might wallow in it and come
out whiter than snow, cannot be imputed to him on his own authority. "I
come as an infallible patent medicine for bad consciences" is not one
of the sayings in the gospels. If Jesus could have been consulted on
Bunyan's allegory as to that business of the burden of sin dropping from
the pilgrim's back when he caught sight of the cross, we must infer from
his teaching that he would have told Bunyan in forcible terms that he
had never made a greater mistake in his life, and that the business of a
Christ was to make self-satisfied sinners feel the burden of their sins
and stop committing them instead of assuring them that they could not
help it, as it was all Adam's fault, but that it did not matter as long
as they were credulous and friendly about himself. Even when he believed
himself to be a god, he did not regard himself as a scapegoat. He was
to take away the sins of the world by good government, by justice and
mercy, by setting the welfare of little children above the pride of
princes, by casting all the quackeries and idolatries which now usurp
and malversate the power of God into what our local authorities quaintly
call the dust destructor, and by riding on the clouds of heaven in glory
instead of in a thousand-guinea motor car. That was delirious, if you
like; but it was the delirium of a free soul, not of a shamebound one
like Paul's. There has really never been a more monstrous imposition
perpetrated than the imposition of the limitations of Paul's soul upon
the soul of Jesus.