The various classes of orthodox Christian doctrines should be attacked
in very different styles by the champions of the great army of
free-thinkers, who are at the present day besieging the venerable
superstitions of the past. Around the Deity of Jesus cluster many
hallowed memories and fond associations; the worship of centuries has
shed around his figure a halo of light, and he has been made into the
ideal of Humanity; the noblest conceptions of morality, the highest
flights of enlightened minds, have been enshrined in a human personality
and called by the name of Christ; the Christ-idea has risen and expanded
with every development of human progress, and the Christ of the highest
Christianity of the day is far other than the Christ of Augustine, of
Thomas à Kempis, of Luther, or Knox; the strivings after light, after
knowledge, after holiness, of the noblest sons of men have been
called by them a following of Jesus; Jesus is baptized in human tears,
crucified in human pains, glorified in human hopes. Because of all this,
because he is dear to human hearts and identified with human struggles,
therefore he should be gently spoken of by all who feel the bonds of
the brotherhood of man; the dogma of his Deity must be assailed, must be
overthrown, because it is false, because it destroys the unity of God,
because it veils from us the Eternal Spirit, the source of all things,
but he himself should be reverently spoken of, so far as truthfulness
permits, and this dogma, although persistently battled against, should
be attacked without anger and without scorn.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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