Page:The Gospel of Christianity and the Gospel of Freethought.pdf/9

 the invariable law, may rule their lives well, and live happily? Show me one drunkard, who has first ruined his nerves, and has then steadied his shaking hand by prayer, and I will believe that this Christian doctrine of forgiveness by a loving Father is true and good news. Good news, I admit it to be to the thief, to the outlaw, to the murderer, in the sense that it would be good news to them to be told that all laws were repealed; but good news to the world it is not. Rather most evil news; for it encourages evil by promising escape from deserved punishment; it weakens good by giving to the good and to the bad one equal happiness. But the gospel of Freethought is really good news to the world, though bad news to the evilly-disposed while they refuse to amend their ways; for it warns men to avoid wrong-doing, by pointing out the misery which invariably follows evil; it strengthens men in leading noble lives, by showing them the good results that flow therefrom; it teaches the true path to happiness, by discovering and proclaiming natural laws. Christianity injures the world by condoning evil; Secularism blesses the world by making the happiness of one depend upon the good of all.

The gospel of Christianity is good news because it reveals to us the existence of the Devil. It does not tell us where he came from, or how he became a Devil. It tells us that God is all-holy, and it teaches us that God made good angels: it hints that Satan was a very fine specimen of an angel, a leader among angels, but that, at some indefinite time, he fell and became a Devil. Milton relates the whole affair in detail, but does not inform us how a perfect angel could do wrong of his own accord. In Job we meet Satan when he is half-way through his transformation, and is still quite at home in Heaven, and in fact plots with God to tempt Job. We meet him in the Gospels, where God, in the form of Jesus, still treats him with courteous respect, and argues with him. Later, he becomes a roaring lion and a dragon. What he is like now we are not told. But, as a Secularist, I venture to plead that this is not good news at all. The Christian may retort that it is true nevertheless. Then I challenge him for evidence. He can only give the assertion of his gospel: without Christianity we have no proof of the existence of the Devil, and I have, therefore, a right to say that the news is made by Christianity, and is most decidedly bad. Freethought has no Devil. It studies history, and therefore it knows, what most Christians do not know, where this notion