I flung this Lie out of my mind, and for many years,
until I came to see that God himself had done this thing for me, the
name of God meant nothing to me but the hideous scar in my heart where a
fearful demon had been.

I see about me to-day many dreadful moral and mental cripples with this
bogey God of the nursery-maid, with his black, insane revenges, still
living like a horrible parasite in their hearts in the place where God
should be. They are afraid, afraid, afraid; they dare not be kindly to
formal sinners, they dare not abandon a hundred foolish observances;
they dare not look at the causes of things. They are afraid of sunshine,
of nakedness, of health, of adventure, of science, lest that old
watching spider take offence. The voice of the true God whispers in
their hearts, echoes in speech and writing, but they avert themselves,
fear-driven. For the true God has no lash of fear. And how the
foul-minded bigot, with his ill-shaven face, his greasy skin, his thick,
gesticulating hands, his bellowings and threatenings, loves to reap this
harvest of fear the ignorant cunning of the nursery girl has sown
for him! How he loves the importance of denunciation, and, himself
a malignant cripple, to rally the company of these crippled souls to
persecute and destroy the happy children of God! . . .

Christian priestcraft turns a dreadful face to children. There is a real
wickedness of the priest that is different from other wickedness, and
that affects a reasonable mind just as cruelty and strange perversions
of instinct affect it. Let a former Archbishop of Canterbury speak
for me. This that follows is the account given by Archbishop Tait in a
debate in the Upper House of Convocation (July 3rd, 1877) of one of the
publications of a certain SOCIETY OF THE HOLY CROSS:

"I take this book, as its contents show, to be meant for the instruction
of very young children. I find, in one of the pages of it, the statement
that between the ages of six and six and a half years would be the
proper time for the inculcation of the teaching which is to be found in
the book. Now, six to six and a half is certainly a very tender age, and
to these children I find these statements addressed in the book:

"'It is to the priest, and to the priest only, that the child must
acknowledge his sins, if he desires that God should forgive him.'

"I hope and trust the person, the three clergymen, or however many there
were, did not exactly realise