anity, the
Christianity of Christ, prevails, will mankind be morally and
spiritually lifted into a higher sphere. Put together the wisest and
most ennobling suggestions of those who regard Christianity as obsolete
and you find that it is virtually Christianity which is delineated. It
is in the prevalence of principles and practices which, however they
may be designated, are in reality Christian, that the salvation of
society and of individuals will be found. In the absence of such
principles and practices will be found the secret of ruin, disorder,
dissolution, and decay.

It is false Christianity against which the tornado of abuse is really
directed. Where genuine Christianity appears, and is recognised as
genuine, it commands respect. {26} Even the most virulent of recent
assailants, who seriously considers that, until we get rid of the
'incubus of the modern Christian religion, our civilisation will so
surely decay that we shall become an entirely decadent race,' and who
complacently announces that 'it will not be difficult to create a faith
and a religion which will serve the needs of humanity where
Christianity has so signally failed,' even he is graciously pleased to
allow, 'I have no quarrel with Christianity as a code of morals. The
Sermon on the Mount, no matter who preached it, is quite sufficient, if
its teaching was only practised instead of preached, to make this world
an eminently desirable place in which to live. My quarrel is concerned
with the professional promoters and organisers of religion who have
made the very name of Christianity to stink in the nostrils of honest
men.' In other words, it is not to Christianity, but to Christians by
whom it is misrepresented, that he is opposed, and he {27} cannot
refrain from granting, though surely with transparent inconsistency,
that it is by the noble lives of Christians that Christianity has been
so long preserved. 'It won, with its beauty and sentiment, the
allegiance of many who were true and manly. And it is such as these
who have raised the Gospel from the slough of infamy. It is such as
these who, in the darkest ages, have perpetuated by the goodness of
their lives the faith that is left to-day. It is the virtues of
Christians, not the virtue of Christianity, that keeps the faith
alive.'[20] The very opposite is nearer the truth. The virtues of
Christians are simply the outcome of the virtue of Christianity: it is
the vices of Christians w