14, 15).
Christ proclaims openly: "Think not that I am come to send peace on
earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man
at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and
the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man's foes shall be
they of his own household" (Ibid, 34-36). To a man whom he calls to
follow him, and who asks to be allowed first to bury his father, Christ
gives the brutal reply: "Let the dead bury their dead: but go thou and
preach the kingdom of God" (Luke x. 60). Another time he says: "If any
man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and
children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he
cannot be my disciple" (Ibid, xiv. 26). A religion that destroys the
home, that introduces discord into the family, that bids its votaries
hate all else save Christ, acts as a disintegrating force in human life,
and cannot be too strongly opposed.

Neither must we forget the teaching of Christ regarding marriage. He
deliberately places virginity above marriage, and counsels
self-mutilation to those capable of making the sacrifice. "All men
cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given ... there be
eunuchs which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's
sake. _He that is able to receive it, let him receive it_" (Matt. xix.
11, 12). Following this, 1 Cor. vii. teaches the superiority of an
unmarried state, and threatens "trouble in the flesh" to those who
marry. And in Rev. xiv. 1-4, we find, following the Lamb, with special
privileges, 144,000 who "were not defiled with women; for they are
virgins." This coarse and insulting way of regarding women, as though
they existed merely to be the safety-valves of men's passions, and that
the best men were above the temptation of loving them, has been the
source of unnumbered evils. To this saying of Christ are due the
self-mutilations of many, such as Origen, and the destruction of myriads
of human lives in celibacy; monks and nuns innumerable owe to this evil
teaching their shrivelled lives and withered hearts. For centuries the
leaders of Christian thought spoke of women as of a necessary evil, and
the greatest saints of the Church are those who despised women the most.
The subjection of women in Western lands is wholly due to Christianity.
Among the Teutons women were honoured, and held a noble and dignified
place in the tribe; Christianity brought w