Paul must soon have found that his followers had gained peace of mind
and victory over death and sin at the cost of all moral responsibility;
for he did his best to reintroduce it by making good conduct the test
of sincere belief, and insisting that sincere belief was necessary to
salvation. But as his system was rooted in the plain fact that as what
he called sin includes sex and is therefore an ineradicable part of
human nature (why else should Christ have had to atone for the sin of
all future generations?) it was impossible for him to declare that sin,
even in its wickedest extremity, could forfeit the sinner's salvation if
he repented and believed. And to this day Pauline Christianity is, and
owes its enormous vogue to being, a premium on sin. Its consequences
have had to be held in check by the worldlywise majority through a
violently anti-Christian system of criminal law and stern morality. But
of course the main restraint is human nature, which has good impulses as
well as bad ones, and refrains from theft and murder and cruelty, even
when it is taught that it can commit them all at the expense of Christ
and go happily to heaven afterwards, simply because it does not always
want to murder or rob or torture.
It is now easy to understand why the Christianity of Jesus failed
completely to establish itself politically and socially, and was easily
suppressed by the police and the Church, whilst Paulinism overran the
whole western civilized world, which was at that time the Roman Empire,
and was adopted by it as its official faith, the old avenging gods
falling helplessly before the new Redeemer. It still retains, as we may
see in Africa, its power of bringing to simple people a message of hope
and consolation that no other religion offers. But this enchantment is
produced by its spurious association with the personal charm of Jesus,
and exists only for untrained minds. In the hands of a logical Frenchman
like Calvin, pushing it to its utmost conclusions, and devising
"institutes" for hardheaded adult Scots and literal Swiss, it becomes
the most infernal of fatalisms; and the lives of civilized children are
blighted by its logic whilst negro piccaninnies are rejoicing in its
legends.