Page:The Gospel of Christianity and the Gospel of Freethought.pdf/6

 the world. This gospel is very much bound up with Science, and thus there may have been some confusion about it in the episcopal mind. A rumour may have penetrated to the depths of his palace, which murmured that a foe had arisen against Christianity, and was rapidly progressing, especially among those to whom Christianity had brought no glad tidings of great joy, to be found on earth. The gospel of Freethought is the daughter of Science; the good news she brings is based upon scientific facts; along the path in which she guides the feet of men she holds up the lamp of Science to show the way.

I intend now to lay before you the leading points of these two gospels, so that you may see clearly the advantages of each, and may judge between them; may see which of them has in it most hope for man, most promise for humanity.

The gospel of Christianity is good news because it reveals to us the existence of a God. It tells us of a God who is unlimited in being, but yet limited to a personal existence; unlimited in power, but yet frustrated and checkmated at every step; unlimited in goodness, yet allowing plagues and famines to desolate the world he loves, and the children he cherishes in his "Fatherly Heart;" the author of all things and perfectly holy, yet creator and ruler of a world where evil is found in all directions; a pure spirit, yet possessing face, hands, loins, feet, like a material human being.

The gospel of Freethought knows of no such being as this. Thought cannot think him out: reason cannot found his existence on any known facts; imagination cannot paint his picture, with its contradictory attributes; her colours all run into each other, and make a confused blot. A God of love? that is, a God so loving that he made a world, whose scheme is based on suffering and death; a God so loving that he formed the parents of the human race, and made the future of all mankind depend upon the eating of an apple; a God so loving that he then sent a serpent to tempt the woman whom he had predestined to fall; a God so loving that he drowned the world in his fury, because it was exactly what he had from all eternity designed that it should be; a God so loving that in Egypt he slew the little children, because the king, whose heart he had himself hardened, was hard-hearted; a God so loving that his chosen people slew men, and women, and the little ones even yet unborn, because these poor folks were living in a land coveted by the fierce