“How justice frowned and vengeance stood
To drive me down to endless pain!
But the great Son propos’d his blood,
And _heavenly wrath grew mild again_.”
Think of the religion based on such an idea of God! And think on the
terrible effect on men and women which such religion must have!
The following description of the Christian God was probably written by one
of his adorers:—
“Adore and tremble for our God
Is a consuming fire!
His jealous eyes with wrath inflame,
And raise His vengeance higher.
“Almighty vengeance, how it burns,
How bright His fury glows!
Vast magazines of plagues and storms
Lie treasured for His foes.
“Those heaps of wrath, by slow degrees,
Are force into a flame:
But kindled, Oh! how fierce they blaze!
And rend all nature’s frame.
“At His approach the mountains flee,
And seek a watery grave;
The frighted sea makes haste away,
And shrinks up every wave.
“Through the wide air the weighty rocks
Are swift as hailstones hurled;
Who dares engage His fiery rage,
That shakes the solid world?
“Thy hand shall on rebellious kings
A fiery tempest pour,
While we, beneath Thy sheltering wings,
Thy _just_ revenge adore.”
And we are asked to love this God! We should just as soon think of loving
a tiger, a cyclone, a deluge, a fiend. Love goes out to what is lovely. We
can love what is good, what is beautiful, what is noble; a great-hearted
man, a pitying woman we cannot help loving, but if we should say that we
love such a God as is pictured in the words of that hymn we should lie.
Man cannot love hate, vengeance, wrath—even in a God.
The Christian church, down through the ages, has been like the God it
worshipped—full of hate, malice and cruelty. The world has grown kind and
humane just in proportion as it has given up worship of this divine
monster. We judge gods as we judge men, and we can respect and love only
what is worthy of respect and love from a human point of view. If there is
such a God as is painted in Christian literature he deserves, not to be
worshipped, but to be shot.
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The Bible upon which Christianity is founded does not say what
Christianity is, what a Christian is, nor what we must do in order to be a
Christian.