“Yes, the Devil is human nature,” he resumed. “For it would thwart progress forever, groveling before its idol of a soul. But already, when I was a young man, only the intellectuals believed in Christianity. Once it had been the masses. But Science proved that there was nothing but Matter, and the momentum of the materialistic impulse was too strong for the reviving faith. The aristocrats should have guarded their faith instead of letting the people rise to control. But they were fools. They set up in little rival bodies when Christ prayed for them to be one. They permitted divorce when He said no. They tried to compromise with Him, all except Rome and barbarous Russia, and that is why St. Peter’s still stands as a Cathedral while St. Paul’s is the Ant Temple. I remember it all. “Christ knew. He knew they would go under if they tried to sail with the wind. When Science said there were no miracles they cut out the miracles. And when the visionary Myers made his generation think there might be miracles after all, they put some of them back again, but very cautiously. They didn’t know that the people weren’t going to follow them into rationalism and then out again. Nobody was going to believe when the leaders themselves didn’t believe. “When He taught them how to heal the sick they preferred to mix His prescription with drugs. They couldn’t believe in one thing and they couldn’t believe in the other. He told them to leave Caesar’s things to Caesar, and they went into politics. They tried to bargain with Socialism when it became strong, but it wouldn’t have anything to do with them. Then they preached housing reform and a good living, when He praised poverty and told them to preach resignation. They couldn’t obey in anything; they thought they knew better; they tried to follow the times after they split into pieces; of course they went under.” “Is there no Christianity anywhere?” I asked. “In your native Russia,” he jeered. “In St. Peter’s, because the Italian Province segregates the evil to keep it under observation. In Cologne, because the bishop learned the secret of the Ray. And in the defectives’ shops. They say they have the Scriptures hidden in there, but the Council has put dozens to the torture and has never found them. It is hard to clear the human mind of its inherited rubbish. After the Revolution, Christianity continued to be taught among other myths. But it aroused anti-social instincts. Christians were the enemies of human progress. They used to go into the Rest Cure Home and ask to be vivisected in place of the wretched morons there. You can’t build up a progressive civilization out of people like that. So the teaching was made a capital offense. That was after we burned the bishops.” “What!” I cried.