was that it despised human
relations; and the strength of primitive Christianity was that, while
it recommended a Stoical simplicity of life, it taught men not to be
afraid of love, but to use and lavish love freely, as being the one
thing which would survive death and not be cut short by it. The
Christian teaching came to this, that the world was meant to be a
school of love, and that love was to be an outward-rippling ring of
affection extending from the family outwards to the tribe, the nation,
the world, and on to God Himself. It laid all its emphasis on the truth
that love is the one immortal thing, that all the joys and triumphs of
the world pass away with the decay of its material framework, but that
love passes boldly on, with linked hands, into the darkness of the
unknown.

The one loss that Christianity recognised was the loss of love; the one
punishment it dreaded was the withholding of love.

As Christianity soaked into the world, it became vitiated, and drew
into itself many elements of human weakness. It became a social force,
it learned to depend on property, it fulminated a code of criminality,
and accepted human standards of prosperity and wealth. It lost its
simplicity and became sophisticated. It is hard to say that men of the
world should not, if they wish, claim to be Christians, but the whole
essence of Christianity is obscured if it is forgotten that its vital
attributes are its indifference to material conveniences, and its
emphatic acceptance of sympathy as the one supreme virtue.

This is but another way of expressing that our troubles and our terrors
alike are based on selfishness, and that if we are really concerned
with the welfare of others we shall not be much concerned with our own.

The difficulty in adopting the Christian theory is that God does not
apparently intend to cure the world by creating all men unselfish.
People are born selfish, and the laws of nature and heredity seem to
ordain that it shall be so. Indeed a certain selfishness seems to be
inseparable from any desire to live. The force of asceticism and of
Stoicism is that they both appeal to selfishness as a motive. They
frankly say, "Happiness is your aim, personal happiness; but instead of
grasping at pleasure whenever it offers, you will find it more prudent
in the end not to care too much about such things." It is true that
popular Christianity makes the same sort of appeal. It says, or seems
to say, "If you grasp at