Is it not the worst of sacrilege, a foul profanation of our human nature, which for us, at least, should be holy and awful, when the heroic and saintly martyrdom of a true Man is thus falsified into the self-schemed sham sacrifice, ineffectual, of a God? The people who profess belief in this are shocked at the outrage offered to our humanity by the Development Theory, while they themselves commit this outrage more flagitious. Little matters whence we sprang; we are what we are. But much matters to what we may attain. If the Development Theory plants our feet in the slime, the Christian Theory bows our head to the dust. It asserts that human nature could not possibly be so good as Jesus, that human genius could not possibly write the books which tell of him; it denies us our noblest prerogatives, and declares us bastards when we claim a crown. It climbs to God by trampling on Man, it builds Heaven in contempt of Earth, its soul is a phosphorescence from the slain and rotting Body; its fervent faith vilifies us worse than the coldest sneer of Mephistopheles. Yet the orthodox shudder and moan, outraged in their pious sensibilities, when one dares to speak with manly plainness of their doctrines, which commence by polluting our common nature, continue by insulting our reason, and conclude by damning the large majority of us! THE ONE THING NEEDFUL (1866.) When I survey with pious joy the present world of Christendom, finding everywhere that the true believers love their neighbors as themselves and are specially enamored of their enemies; that no one of them takes thought for the morrow, what he shall eat or what he shall drink, or wherewithal he or she shall be clothed; that all the pastors and flocks endeavor to outstrip each other in laying not up for themselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal; and all are so intensely eager to quit this earthly tabernacle and become freeholders of mansions in the skies; when I find faith as universal as the air, and charity as common as cold water; I sometimes wonder how it is that any misbelievers and unbelievers are left, and feel astonished that the New Jerusalem has not yet descended, and hope that the next morning’s _Times_ (rechristened _The Eternities_) will announce the inauguration of the Millennium.