, then, is tacitly to accuse him of a kind of
moral turpitude.

But a little while ago, to be an Infidel was to be socially taboo. But
a little while earlier, to be an Infidel was to be persecuted. But a
little earlier still, to be an Infidel was to be an outlaw, subject to
the penalty of death.

Now, it is evident that to visit the penalty of social ostracism or
public contumely upon all who reject the popular religion is to erect an
arbitrary barrier against intellectual and spiritual advance, and to put
a protective tariff upon orthodoxy to the disadvantage of science and
free thought.

The root of the idea that it is wicked to reject the popular religion--a
wickedness of which Christ and Socrates and Buddha are all represented
to have been guilty--thrives in the belief that the Scriptures are the
actual words of God, and that to deny the truth of the Scriptures is to
deny and to affront God.

But the difficulty of the unbeliever lies in the fact that he cannot
believe the Scriptures to be the actual words of God.

The Infidel, therefore, is not denying God's words, nor disobeying God's
commands: he is denying the words and disobeying the commands of _men_.

No man who _knew_ that there was a good and wise God would be so foolish
as to deny that God. No man would reject the words of God if he knew
that God spoke those words.

But the doctrine of the divine origin of the Scriptures rests upon the
authority of the Church; and the difference between the Infidel and
the Christian is that the Infidel rejects and the Christian accepts the
authority of the Church.

Belief and unbelief are not matters of moral excellence or depravity:
they are questions of evidence.

The Christian believes the Scriptures because they are the words of God.
But he believes they are the words of God because some other man has
told him so.

Let him probe the matter to the bottom, and he will inevitably find that
his authority is human, and not, as he supposes, divine.

For you, my Christian friend, have never _seen_ God. You have never
heard God's voice. You have received from God no message in spoken
or written words. You have no direct divine warrant for the divine
authorship of the Scriptures. The authority on which your belief in the
divine revelation rests consists entirely of the Scriptures themselves
and the statements of the Church. But the Church is composed solely of
human beings, and the Scriptures were written and trans