orture; we have destroyed the claims for the
infallibility of the Scriptures, and have taken the fetters of the
Church from the limbs of Science and Thought, and before long we shall
have demolished the belief in miracles. The Christian religion has
defended all these dogmas, and has done inhuman murder in defence
of them; and has been wrong in every instance, and has been finally
defeated in every instance. Steadily and continually the Church has been
driven from its positions. It is still retreating, and we are not to
be persuaded to abandon our attack by the cool assurance that we are
mentally unfit to judge in spiritual matters. Spiritual Discernment has
been beaten by reason in the past, and will be beaten by reason in
the future. It is facts and logic we want, not rhetoric.

SOME OTHER APOLOGIES

Christianity, we are told, vastly improved the relations of rich and
poor.

How comes it, then, that the treatment of the poor by the rich is better
amongst Jews than amongst Christians? How did it fare with the poor all
over Europe in the centuries when Christianity was at the zenith of its
power? How is it we have twelve millions of Christians on the verge of
starvation in England to-day, with a Church rolling in wealth and an
aristocracy decadent from luxury and self-indulgence? How is it that
the gulf betwixt rich and poor in such Christian capitals as New York,
London, and Paris is so wide and deep?

Christianity, we are told, first gave to mankind the gospel of peace.
Christianity did not bring peace, but a sword. The Crusades were holy
wars. The wars in the Netherlands were holy wars. The Spanish Armada was
a holy expedition. Some of these holy wars lasted for centuries and
cost millions of human lives. Most of them were remarkable for the
barbarities and cruelties of the Christian priests and soldiers.

From the beginning of its power Christianity has been warlike, violent,
and ruthless. To-day Europe is an armed camp, and it is not long since
the Christian Kaiser ordered his troops to give no quarter to the
Chinese.

There has never been a Christian nation as peaceful as the Indians and
Burmese under Buddhism. It was King Asoka, and not Jesus Christ or St.
Paul, who first taught and first established a reign of national and
international peace.

To-day the peace of the world is menaced, not by the Buddhists, the
Parsees, the Hindoos, or the Confucians, but by Christian hunger for
territory, Chris