Christianity, we are told, vastly improved the relations of rich and
poor.
How comes it, then, that the treatment of the poor by the rich is better
amongst Jews than amongst Christians? How did it fare with the poor all
over Europe in the centuries when Christianity was at the zenith of its
power? How is it we have twelve millions of Christians on the verge of
starvation in England to-day, with a Church rolling in wealth and an
aristocracy decadent from luxury and self-indulgence? How is it that
the gulf betwixt rich and poor in such Christian capitals as New York,
London, and Paris is so wide and deep?
Christianity, we are told, first gave to mankind the gospel of peace.
Christianity did not bring peace, but a sword. The Crusades were holy
wars. The wars in the Netherlands were holy wars. The Spanish Armada was
a holy expedition. Some of these holy wars lasted for centuries and
cost millions of human lives. Most of them were remarkable for the
barbarities and cruelties of the Christian priests and soldiers.
From the beginning of its power Christianity has been warlike, violent,
and ruthless. To-day Europe is an armed camp, and it is not long since
the Christian Kaiser ordered his troops to give no quarter to the
Chinese.
There has never been a Christian nation as peaceful as the Indians and
Burmese under Buddhism. It was King Asoka, and not Jesus Christ or St.
Paul, who first taught and first established a reign of national and
international peace.
To-day the peace of the world is menaced, not by the Buddhists, the
Parsees, the Hindoos, or the Confucians, but by Christian hunger for
territory, Christian lust of conquest, Christian avarice for the opening
up of "new markets," Christian thirst for military glory, and jealousy,
and envy amongst the Christian powers one of another.
Christianity, we are told, originated the Christ-like type of character.
The answer stares us in the face. How can we account for King Asoka, how
can we account for Buddha?
Christianity, we are told, originated hospitals.
Hospitals were founded two centuries before Christ by King Asoka in
India.
Christianity, we are told, first broke down the barrier between Jew and
Gentile.
How have Christians treated Jews for fifteen centuries? How are
Christians treating Jews to-day in Holy Russia? How long is it since
Jews were granted full rights of citizenship in Christian England?
All this, the Christian will say, applies to the false and not to the
true Christianity.
Let us look, then, for an instant, at the truest and best form of
Christianity, and ask what it is doing. It is preaching about Sin,
Sin, Sin. It is praying to God to do for Man what Man ought to do for
himself, what Man can do for himself, what Man must do for himself; for
God has never done it, and will never do it for him.
And this fault in the Christian--the highest and truest
Christian--attitude towards life does not lie in the Christians: it lies
in the truest and best form of their religion.
It is the belief in Free Will, in Sin, and in a Heavenly Father, and
a future recompense that leads the Christian wrong, and causes him to
mistake the shadow for the substance.