The Christian Religion: An EnquiryIngersoll, Robert Green
Religion
The Christian Religion: An Enquiry
Ingersoll, Robert Green
Agnosticism; Christianity -- Controversial literature
He came, they tell us, to make a revelation, and what did he reveal?
"Love thy neighbour as thyself"? That was in the Old Testament, "Love
God with all thy heart"? That was in the Old Testament, "Return good
for evil "? That was said by _Buddha_ seven hundred years before he was
born, "Do unto others as ye would that they should do unto you"? This
was the doctrine of _Laotse_. Did he come to give a rule of action?
_Zoroaster_ had done this, long before: "Whenever thou art in doubt as
to whether an action is good or bad, abstain from it." Did he come to
teach us of another world? The immortality of the soul had been taught
by _Hindus, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans_ hundreds of years before he
was born. Long before, the world had been told by _Socrates_ that: "One
who is injured ought not to return the injury, for on no account can it
be right to do an injustice; and it is not right to return an injury, or
to do evil to any man, however much we may have suffered from him." And
_Cicero_ had said: "Let us not listen to those who think that we ought
to be angry with our enemies and who believe this to be great and manly:
nothing is more praiseworthy, nothing so clearly shows a great and noble
soul, as clemency and readiness to forgive."
Is there anything nearer perfect than this from _Confucius_: "For
benefits return benefits; for injuries return justice without any
admixture of revenge"?
The dogma of eternal punishment rests upon passages in the _New
Testament_, This infamous belief subverts every idea of justice. Around
the angel of immortality the Church has coiled this serpent. A finite
being can neither commit an infinite sin, nor a sin against the
infinite. A being of infinite goodness and wisdom has no right,
according to the human standard of justice, to create any being destined
to suffer eternal pain. A being of infinite wisdom would not create
a failure, and surely a man destined to everlasting agony is not a
success.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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