There is little joy in the ecclesiastical consciousness of religion. Writers and preachers of Christianity commonly dwell on the dark side of human nature. They tell us of our weakness, not of our ability to be and to do. They mourn and scold over human folly, human sin, human depravity, often leaving untold the noble deeds of man and his nobler powers. "Man is a worm," say they.
They do the same with God. They paint him as a king, not as a father; and as a king who rules by low and selfish means, for low and selfish ends, from low and selfish motives, and with a most melancholy result of his ruling. According to the common opinion of the Christian churches, God's is the most unsuccessful despotism that has ever been set agoing, leading to the eternal ruin of the immense majority of his subjects, as the result of the absolute selfishness of the theological deity. In the theology called Christian the most conspicuous characteristics of God are great force, great self-esteem, and immense destructiveness. He is painted as cruel, revengeful, and without mercy,—the grimmest of the gods. The heathen devils all glower at us through the mask of the theological God. The Mexicans worshipped an idea of God, to which they sacrificed hundreds of captives and criminals. Christian divines tell us of a God that will not kill, but torment in hell the greater portion of his children, and will feed fat his "glory" with the damnation of mankind, the everlasting sacrifice of each ruined soul! If men think that man is a worm, and God has lifted the heavenly heel to give him a squelch which shall last for ever, the relation between God and man is certainly not pleasant for us to think of.
God is thought a hard creditor, man a poor debtor; "religion" is the sum he is to pay ; so he puts that down grudgingly, and with the stingiest fist. Or else God is painted as a grim and awful judge, man a poor, trembling culprit, shivering before his own conscience, and slinking down for fear of the vengeance of the awful judge, hell gaping underneath his feet. Does any one doubt, this? Let him read the Book of Revelation, or the writings of John Calvin, of Baxter, or Edwards, or even of Jeremy Taylor. The theological God is mainly a great devil, and as the theological devil hates "believers," whom he seeks to devour, so the theological God hates "unbelievers,"
