It is all the
worse because these codes and sacred books always contain certain
elements which belong to even earlier and less enlightened stages, and
whole regiments of philosophers or theologians are employed for ages in
putting glosses on ancient and barbaric ideas at which the world
eventually laughs. However, we need not linger here over these ancient
ways of regarding life. The man who keeps his God at a moral level which
we disdain ourselves rarely listens to argument. He protects his "faith"
by believing that it is a mortal sin (involving sentence of hell) to
read any book that would examine it critically. It is a most ingenious
arrangement by which the doctrine of a vindictive God protects itself
against moral progress.
Now any suggestion that God sent this war upon Europe--whether as a
judgment on the clergy, or a judgment on unbelievers, or a judgment on
the arrogance of the Germans, etc.--is part of this old barbarism, and
may be disregarded. It conceives that God is vindictive, and at the same
time assures us that Christianity sternly condemns vindictiveness. It
allows God to deal mighty blows at those who affront him, and tells men
to bear affront with patience and turn the other cheek to the smiter.
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