The others, the unbelievers, the free-thinkers who comment on the
doctrine of Jesus, the historians of religions, the Strausses, the
Renans,--completely imbued with the teachings of the Church, which says
that the doctrine of Jesus accords with difficulty with our conceptions
of life,--tell us very seriously that the doctrine of Jesus is the
doctrine of a visionary, the consolation of feeble minds; that it was
all very well preached in the fishermen's huts by Galilee; but that for
us it is only the sweet dream of one whom Renan calls the "charmant
docteur."
In their opinion, Jesus could not rise to the heights of wisdom and
culture attained by our civilization. If he had been on an intellectual
level with his modern critics, he never would have uttered his charming
nonsense about the birds of the air, the turning of the other cheek, the
taking no thought for the morrow. These historical critics judge of the
value of Christianity by what they see of it as it now exists. The
Christianity of our age and civilization approves of society as it now
is, with its prison-cells, its factories, its houses of infamy, its
parliaments; but as for the doctrine of Jesus, which is opposed to
modern society, it is only empty words. The historical critics see this,
and, unlike the so-called believers, having no motives for concealment,
submit the doctrine to a careful analysis; they refute it
systematically, and prove that Christianity is made up of nothing but
chimerical ideas.
It would seem that before deciding upon the doctrine of Jesus, it would
be necessary to understand of what it consisted; and to decide whether
his doctrine is reasonable or not, it would be well first to realize
that he said exactly what he did say. And this is precisely what we do
not do, what the Church commentators do not do, what the free-thinkers
do not do--and we know very well why. We know perfectly well that the
doctrine of Jesus is directed at and denounces all human errors, all
_tohu_, all the empty idols that we try to except from the category of
errors, by dubbing them "Church," "State," "Culture," "Science," "Art,"
"Civilization." But Jesus spoke precisely of all these, of these and all
other _tohu_. Not only Jesus, but all the Hebrew prophets, John the
Baptist, all the true sages of the world denounced the Church and State
and culture and civilization of their times as sources of man's
perdition.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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