_The Christian Work and Evangelist_ would do to you if he had the power. ¶ Carefully read, analyzed and digested, we find that the sole excuses churches have for not paying taxes are: First, the churches form a police system which prevents certain people from committing crime. Second, the churches supply us a great number of honest and unselfish citizens, who otherwise would be rogues ❦ For these two things they claim a cash reward from the community. My answer is that both propositions are assumptions, quite gratuitous, but that, even if they were true, it would not justify the State in remitting their quota of taxes. ¶ I have had a large and varied experience with clergymen and church-members, and that they are better morally and stand higher intellectually are propositions which they admit, but which no one besides themselves puts forward. The names of clergymen, Sunday-school teachers and pious deacons who go wrong would fill a five-foot shelf of books. In fact, it is an axiom that the bankers’ colony in every penitentiary is made up mostly of church-members ❦ When the University of Copenhagen says that church-members are better citizens than non-church-members, I may believe it. Until then, the verdict must be, “Not Proved”—and especially so, in view of the fact that when Christianity was absolutely supreme the headsman worked overtime, and crime, grime, blood, poverty, disease and woe were the rule, not the exception. The doctrine that some folks are so much better than others that they deserve eternal bliss is the most selfish idea ever put forth by mortal man. Folks who think they are better than others, usually aren’t. That the idea of endless joy for believers, and endless hell for doubters, is not being preached now so much as it was a few years ago, is nothing to the credit of church-members. ¶ All separations of society into sacred and secular, good and bad, saved and lost, learned and illiterate, rich and poor, are illusions which mark certain periods in the evolution of society ❦ The offer of endless life and the threat of endless hell are frightful rudimentary errors of the savage mind, born of fear and frenzy, and then perpetuated as a police system by a Divine Collection Agency. For not only does a religion of fear keep people “good,” but it also makes them pay for being kept good. The offer of immunity from the penalties of sin, through belief in the blood of Jesus, is merely the immunity that human sacrifice once provided, slightly refined and modified. The “belief” in a blood sacrifice has taken the place of the sacrifice itself. ¶ The orthodox Christian Church still teaches immunity from penalties on the acceptance of its creed. From exemption from the natural penalty of a misdeed to exemption from taxation is but a step. The man who can accept the one takes kindly to the other. “Jesus died and paid it all—yes, all the debt I owe.” “Saved by the blood of the Lamb.” That is, throw it off on some one else.