n the name of the "solidarity"
of the human race. And why _solidarity_? Because the word had to be
taken from the French. And why from _the French_? "Because the French,"
Mr. Hughes says, "have risen to a loftier level of human brotherhood
than we." Indeed! Then what becomes of your "purely _Christian_
conception," when "infidel France" outshines "Christian England"? How is
it, too, you have to make the "shameful" confession that "we"--that is,
the Christians--took "nineteen centuries to find out the negro was a man
and therefore a brother"? You did not find it out, in fact, until
the eighteenth century--the century of Voltaire and Thomas Paine--the
century in which Freethought had spread so much, even in England, that
Bishop Butler in the Advertisement to his _Analogy_, dated May, 1736,
could say that "many persons" regarded Christianity as proved to be
"fictitious" to "all people of discernment," and thought that "nothing
remained but to set it up as a principal subject of mirth and ridicule."
How is it your "Christian conceptions" took such a surprising time to be
understood? How is it they had to wait for realisation until the advent
of an age permeated with the spirit of scepticism and secular humanity?

Mr. Hughes is brave enough--in the absence of a critic--to start with
Jesus Christ as the first cosmopolitan. "He came of the Jewish stock,"
we are told, "and yet he had no trace of the Jew in him." Of course
not--in Christian sermons and Christian pictures, preached and painted
for non-Jewish, and indeed Jew-hating nations. But there is a very
decided "trace of the Jew in him" in the New Testament. To the Canaanite
woman he said, "I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of
Israel." To the twelve he said, "Go not into the way of the Gentiles,
and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: But go rather to the
lost sheep of the house of Israel." It was Paul who, finding he could
not make headway against the apostles who had known Jesus personally,
exclaimed, "Lo, we turn to the Gentiles." That exclamation was a turning
point. It was the first real step to such universalism as Christianity
has attained. No wonder, therefore, that Comte puts Paul instead of
Jesus into the Positivist calendar, as the real founder of Christianity.

Even in the case of St. Paul, it is perfectly idle to suppose that his
cosmopolitanism extended beyond the Roman empire. A little study and
reflection would show Mr. Hughes that