Page:The Gospel of Christianity and the Gospel of Freethought.pdf/13

 pointed iron. But Secularism bids us leave a future life alone. If there is one, we shall get it in due time; if there is not, extinction is far preferable to torture, or to personal happiness while others are being tortured. Fix your eyes upon earth, Freethought says to the Secularist; of this life you are sure: a heaven in the clouds has nothing to do with you now; work rather to make a heaven upon earth: do not trouble how to meet a future life; learn rather to live your present life well. It has been justly said: "For a long time men have been taught how to die; what is wanted is, that they should be taught how to live." At any rate, Secularism removes from our sky the brooding, lowering, crowds which have darkened it so long; it clears away from the tomb that terrible shadow which enshrouds it when the Christian lays there the body of some dear relative or beloved friend who has died without faith in God; it quenches the lurid flames which might otherwise affright us when we lie upon our own death-beds, if we have spent our lives in serving man instead of in serving God; it gives us that calm serenity which can quietly do its work here so long as strength holds out, and which, when death calls us, will enable us to lie down and die in peace.

The gospel of Christianity is good news because it comes to sinners with the offer of an Atonement for sin. Man, says Christianity, is lying under the heavy wrath of a justly-offended God, and then Jesus Christ, the Son of God, mercifully comes forward, and bears the punishment of sin for us by being crucified. I am not going to deal now with the subject of the Atonement doctrinally, nor to criticise the justice of its arrangements, or the ingenuity of its design. We are only concerned with it, as a prominent feature of the gospel of Christianity, as good news to the world. What benefit does the Atonement, supposed to be wrought by Jesus, confer on the world? "It delivers us from sin and from the wrath of God." That it delivers us from sin, I deny; that it delivers us from the wrath of God is a work of supererogation, if the gospel of Secularism is true. At any rate, it is not good news to be told that we are under the wrath of God; news it is, for we should never have found it out for ourselves; good, it most decidedly is not. The wrath of God is one of the blessings brought to light by the gospel of Christianity. An Atheist may go out into the country in a Sunday excursion-train, he may