"If you take from us our religion," say the Christians, "what have you
to offer but counsels of despair?" This seems to me rather a commercial
way of putting the case, and not a very moral one. Because a moral man
would not say: "If I give up my religion, what will you pay me?" He
would say: "I will never give, up my religion unless I am convinced
it is not _true_." To a moral man the truth would matter, but the cost
would not. To ask what one may _gain_ is to show an absence of all real
religious feeling.
The feeling of a truly religious man is the feeling that, cost what it
may, he must do _right_. A religiously-minded man _could_ not profess a
religion which he did not believe to be true. To him the vital question
would be, not "What will you give me to desert my colours?" but "What is
the _truth_?"
But, besides being immoral, the demand is unreasonable. If I say that
a religion is untrue, the believer has a perfect right to ask me for
proofs of my assertion; but he has no right to ask me for a new promise.
Suppose I say this thing is not true, and to believe anything which is
untrue is useless. Then, the believer may justly demand my reasons. But
he has no right to ask me for a new dream in place of the old one. I am
not a prophet, with promises of crowns and glories in my gift.
But yet I will answer this queer question as fully as I can.
I do not say there is no God. I do not say there is no "Heaven," nor
that the soul is not immortal. There is not enough evidence to justify
me in making such assertions.