e advocating the claims of
Christianity, to include all good done by men in nominally Christian
countries as if such good were the result of Christianity, while they
contend that the evil which exists prevails in spite of Christianity.
I shall try to make out that the ameliorating march of the last few
centuries has been initiated by the heretics of each age, though I quite
concede that the men and women denounced and persecuted as infidels by
the pious of one century, are frequently claimed as saints by the pious
of a later generation.

What then is Christianity? As a system or scheme of doctrine,
Christianity may, I submit, not unfairly be gathered from the Old and
New Testaments. It is true that some Christians to-day desire to escape
from submission to portions, at any rate, of the Old Testament; but this
very tendency seems to me to be part of the result of the beneficial
heresy for which I am pleading. Man's humanity has revolted against Old
Testament barbarism; and therefore he has attempted to disassociate
the Old Testament from Christianity. Unless Old and New Testaments are
accepted as God's revelation to man, Christianity has no higher claim
than any other of the world's many religions, if no such claim can be
made out for it apart from the Bible. And though it is quite true that
some who deem themselves Christians put the Old Testament completely in
the background, this is, I allege, because they are out-growing their
Christianity. Without the doctrine of the atoning sacrifice of Jesus,
Christianity, as a religion, is naught; but unless the story of Adam's
fall is accepted, the redemption from the consequences of that fall
cannot be believed. Both in Great Britain and in the United States the
Old and New Testaments are forced on the people as part of Christianity;
for it is blasphemy at common law to deny the scriptures of the Old and
New Testaments to be of divine authority; and such denial is punishable
with fine and imprisonment, or even worse. The rejection of Christianity
intended throughout this paper, is therefore the rejection of the Old
and New Testaments as being of divine revelation. It is the rejection
alike of the authorised teachings of the Church of Rome and of the
Church of England, as these may be found in the Bible, the creeds, the
encyclicals, the prayer book, the canons and homilies of either or both
of these churches. It is the rejection of the Christianity of Luther, of
Calvin, and of W