ptic dependent upon the whims of the majority
believers. He is forced to hold his tongue, or else is tortured. Are not
the wants of his family, the hunger, and ostracism torture? Thus
thousands are forced into hypocrisy. Many others, although they have
outgrown all fear of the god of orthodoxy, the fear of the god of social
pressure remains.

There are embodied in all creeds three human impulses: fear, conceit,
and hatred; and religion has given an air of respectability to these
passions. Religion is a malignant disease born of fear, a cancer which
has been eating into the vitals of everything that is worth while in our
civilization; and by its growth obstructing those advances which make
for a more healthful life.

Morally and intellectually, socially and historically, religion has been
shown to be a pernicious influence. Some of these influences falling
into these classifications have been considered in previous chapters.

The modern Christian, in his amusing ignorance, asserts that
Christianity is now mild and rationalistic, ignoring the fact that all
its so-called mildness and rationalism is due to the teaching of men who
in their own day were persecuted by all orthodox Christians.

"Historically, churches have stood on the side of the powers that be.
They have defended slavery or have held their tongues about it. They
have maintained serfdom and kept serfs. They have opposed every movement
undertaken for the liberation of the masses of men; the ideals of
liberty, equality and fraternity are the creations of the camps of their
enemies, of the rationalists of the eighteenth century, and the liberals
and socialists of the nineteenth century. They have defended and
condoned the industrial exploitation of children. They have fought
bitterly the enfranchisement of women. They have justified unjust war.
They have fought with book and bill and candle and fagot every new great
step in the advancement of science from gravitation to evolution.
Wardens, ever since Constantine gave the schools of antiquity into the
keeping of the Christian bishops, of the education of the people, they
have fought with all their power the establishment of free public
schools and the spread of literacy and knowledge among the people."
(_Horace M. Kallen: "Why Religion."_)

If Christianity has made any progress in the assimilation of doctrines
that are less barbarous than heretofore, they have been effected in
spite of the most vigorous resis