essor makes
plain just what he means by "individual suffering, individual
sacrifices"; he means all the horrors of capitalism; and the advantage
of Christianity is that it makes you think that by submitting to these
horrors, you are profiting your own soul. "By making individual
salvation depend on the acceptance of suffering, on the voluntary
sacrifice of egotistical interests, Christianity adapts the individual
to society".

And this, as the professor explains, is not an easy thing to do, in a
world in which so many people are thinking for themselves. "The only
means of causing the rationalized individual to consent to the
sacrifice ... is to captivate him with a sufficiently powerful ideal"
And the professor shows how beautifully Jesus can be used for this
purpose. "Jesus, the so-called humanitarian, never ceased to insist on
the necessity of suffering, the desirableness of suffering--of that
suffering which a weak and sickly humanitarianism would fain suppress
if it could."

You get this, you "blanket-stiff", you "husky", or "wop", or whatever
you are--you disinherited of the earth, you proletarians who have only
your labor-power to sell, you weak and sickly ones who are condemned
to elimination? There has come, let us say, a period of
"overproduction"; you have raised too much food, and therefore you are
starving, you have woven too much cloth, and therefore you are naked,
you have finished the world for your masters, and it is time for you
to move out of the way. As the sociologist from Geneva phrases it,
"Your suppression imposes itself as an imperious necessity." And the
function of the Christian religion is to make you enjoy the process,
by "captivating you with a sufficiently powerful ideal"! The priest
will fill your nostrils with incense, your eyes with candle-lights and
images, your ears with sweet music and soothing words; and so you will
perish without raising a finger! "Here," reflects the professor, "we
see how magnificently the teaching of Jesus applies to all classes of
society!"

Somebody has evidently put up to our Christian sociologist the
embarrassing fact that so many of those who survive under the
capitalist system are godless scoundrels. But do you think that
troubles him? Not for long. Like all religious thinkers, he carries
with his scholar's equipment a pair of metaphysical wings, wherewith
at any moment he may soar into the empyrean, out of reach of vulgar
materialists, like you and me