Page:Anthony John (IA anthonyjohn00jero).pdf/219

 would admit that his own religion failed to answer all his questions. But Anthony's religion contented him still less. Why should a just God, to whom all things were possible, have made man a creature of "low intelligence and evil instincts," leaving him to welter through the ages amid cruelty, blood and lust, instead of fashioning him from the beginning a fit and proper heir for the kingdom of eternity? That he might work out his own salvation! That a few scattered fortunates, less predisposed to evil than their fellows or possessed of greater powers of resistance, might struggle out of the mire—enter into their inheritance: the great bulk cursed from their birth, be left to sink into destruction. The Christ legend he found himself unable to accept. If true, then God was fallible, His omniscience a myth—a God who made mistakes and sought to rectify them. Even so, He had not succeeded. The number of true Christians—the number of those who sought to live according to Christ's teaching were fewer today than under the reign of the Cæsars. During the Middle Ages the dying embers of Christianity had burnt up anew. Saint Francis had insisted upon the necessity of poverty, of love—had preached the brotherhood of all things living. Men and women in increasing numbers had for a brief period