Page:The Necessity of Atheism (Brooks).djvu/225

Rh "And, truly, the case against Christianity is plain and damning. Never, during the whole of its history has it spoken in a clear voice against slavery; always, as we have seen, its chief supporters have been pronounced believers. They have cited religious teaching in its defence, they have used all the power of the Church for its maintenance. Naturally, in a world in which the vast majority are professing Christians, believers are to be found on the side of humanity and justice. But to that the reply is plain. Men are human before they are Christians; both history and experience point, to the constant lesson of the many cases in which the claims of a developing humanity override those of an inculcated religious teaching.

"But the damning fact against Christianity is, not that it found slavery here when it arrived, and accepted it. as a settled institution, not even that it is plainly taught in its 'sacred' books, but, that it deliberately created a new form of slavery, and for hundreds of years invested it with a brutality greater than that which existed centuries before. A religion which could tolerate this slavery, argue for it, and fight for it, cannot by any stretch of reasoning be credited with an influence in forwarding emancipation. Christianity no more abolished slavery than it abolished witchcraft, the belief in demonism, or punishment for heresy. It was the growing moral, and social sense of mankind that compelled Christians and Christianity to give up these and other things." (C. Cohen: "Christianity, Slavery, and. Labor")