a, Italy, and the
United States are all Christian nations. They all worship the same God,
they are all brothers in Christ, but that did not prevent their cutting
each other's throats on the battlefield. Their common religious belief
did not render the war less bitter nor less bloodthirsty.

Is it not a fact that if the Christian nations of the world would only
live at peace together, war would be impossible? Neither Mohammedan
nations nor Japan could threaten. When the Christian speaks of the
brotherhood of man, he means a brotherhood of _believers_ only. What
kind of brotherhood did Christians bestow on Jews or heretics in the
Middle Ages? Was it the brotherhood of man that Christianity bestowed on
the conquered Mexican and Peruvian nations, and on the Indians of our
own country? If Christianity had expended as much energy in teaching its
adherents the fundamentals of a sane social life, as it did to prepare
mankind for a mythical life in Heaven, civilization would be today
greatly in advance of where it is.

Does any one believe that Jew, Mohammedan, Catholic, and Protestant can
long live in peace together? Common social needs bring mankind together
but religion drives them apart. There can never be a lasting peace until
the myth of God is dispelled forever from the minds of men. Then and
then only, can the adjustment between economic and political forces lead
to a permanent peace.

CHAPTER XV

CHRISTIANITY AND SLAVERY

_Nothing during the American struggle against the slave system did
more to wean religious and God-fearing men and women from the old
interpretation of Scripture than the use of it to justify slavery._

ANDREW DICKSON WHITE.

The Christian Church has had the audacity, in modern times, to proclaim
that it had abolished slavery and the slave trade. It is difficult to
understand how any "righteous" man could make that contention
remembering that it was not until the middle of the nineteenth century
that slavery became illegal in Christian countries, with one exception,
Abyssinia, the oldest of the Christian countries, which still maintains
slavery. In our own country, a nation had to be embroiled in a civil war
before slavery could be abolished. Abolished by Christianity in the
nineteenth century, when Christianity has been dominant in most
civilized countries since the third century, and when the traffic in
human flesh flourished right through those centuries in which