On the Prospects of Christianity: Bernard Shaw's Preface to Androcles and the LionShaw, Bernard
Religion
On the Prospects of Christianity: Bernard Shaw's Preface to Androcles and the Lion
Shaw, Bernard
Christianity; Essays; Prefaces
intelligent enough to be incapable of mere dull self-righteousness, and
highly susceptible to the beauty and interest of the real workings
of the Holy Ghost, try to live more rational and abundant lives. The
abominable amusement of terrifying children with threats of hell is
another of these diversions, and perhaps the vilest and most mischievous
of them. The net result is that the imitators of the apostles,
whether they are called Holy Willies or Stigginses in derision, or, in
admiration, Puritans or saints, are, outside their own congregations,
and to a considerable extent inside them, heartily detested. Now nobody
detests Jesus, though many who have been tormented in their childhood in
his name include him in their general loathing of everything
connected with the word religion; whilst others, who know him only by
misrepresentation as a sentimental pacifist and an ascetic, include him
in their general dislike of that type of character. In the same way a
student who has had to "get up" Shakespear as a college subject may hate
Shakespear; and people who dislike the theatre may include Moliere in
that dislike without ever having read a line of his or witnessed one of
his plays; but nobody with any knowledge of Shakespear or Moliere could
possibly detest them, or read without pity and horror a description
of their being insulted, tortured, and killed. And the same is true
of Jesus. But it requires the most strenuous effort of conscience to
refrain from crying "Serve him right" when we read of the stoning of
Stephen; and nobody has ever cared twopence about the martyrdom of
Peter: many better men have died worse deaths: for example, honest Hugh
Latimer, who was burned by us, was worth fifty Stephens and a dozen
Peters. One feels at last that when Jesus called Peter from his boat,
he spoiled an honest fisherman, and made nothing better out of the wreck
than a salvation monger.
THE CONTROVERSIES ON BAPTISM AND TRANSUBSTANTIATION.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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