Saints, for example. Well, if
the Saints were geniuses in matters religious, the Saints ought to have
been better judges of spiritual truth than other men. But was it so? The
Saints believed in angels, and devils, and witches, and hell-fire
and Jonah, and the Flood; in demoniacal possession, in the working of
miracles by the bones of dead martyrs; the Saints accepted David and
Abraham and Moses as men after God's own heart.

Many of the most spiritually gifted Christians do not believe in these
things any longer. The Saints, then, were mistaken. They were mistaken
about these spiritual matters in which they are alleged to have been
specially gifted.

We do not believe in sorcerers, in witches, in miracle-working relics,
in devils, and eternal fire and brimstone. Why? Because science has
killed those errors. What is science? It is reason applied to knowledge.
The faculty of reason, then, has excelled this boasted faculty of
spiritual discernment in its own religious sphere.

It would be easy to multiply examples.

Jeremy Taylor was one of the most brilliant and spiritual of our
divines. But his spiritual perception, as evidenced in his works, was
fearfully at fault. He believed in hell-fire, and in hell-fire for all
outside the pale of the Christian Church. And he was afraid of God, and
afraid of death.

Archdeacon Wilson denies to us this faculty of spiritual perception.
Very well. But I have enough mental acuteness to see that the religion
of Jeremy Taylor was cowardly, and gloomy, and untrue.

Luther and Wesley were spiritual geniuses. They both believed in
witchcraft. Luther believed in burning heretics. Wesley said if we gave
up belief in witchcraft we must give up belief in the Bible.

Luther and Wesley were mistaken: their spiritual discernment had led
them wrong. Their superstition and cruelty were condemned by humanity
and common sense.

To me it appears that these men of "spiritual discernment" are really
men of abnormally credulous and emotional natures: men too weak to face
the facts.

We cannot allow the Christians to hold this position unchallenged. I
regard the religious plane as a lower one than our own. I think
the Christian idea of God is even now, after two thousand years of
evolution, a very mean and weak one.

I cannot love nor revere a "Heavenly Father" whose children have to pray
to Him for what they need, or for pardon for their sins. My children do
not need to pray to me for food or