All through the century (nineteenth), whenever and wherever there is a movement for change and betterment, the clergy are found opposing it. In this they are merely carrying on the tradition of their order. When one looks back over history, one realizes that there is scarcely any discovery which science has made for human advancement and happiness which churchmen and theologians have not violently opposed. Not content with burning each other, they burnt the, men who discovered the earth's motion, burnt the men who made the first tentative beginnings of physics and chemistry, burnt the men who laid the foundations of our medical knowledge. . . . Bad as has been the church's record in the past, it is not greatly improved in the present. . . . For two thousand years teachers and preachers have striven, by inculcating the principles and precepts of Christianity, to mould men's character and to improve their conduct; yet we still have our prisons, our judges, and our wars, and it .remains today, as it has done for two thousand years past, an arguable question whether men are better or worse than they were before Christianity was introduced.
If we will for a moment imagine the Bible to have come suddenly to our attention today, unencumbered by a tradition of divine authority, and with no more sacredness than a newly discovered writing of ancient China or Egypt, we can see quite readily that it would occur to nobody who took the work merely on its merits either to accept it as scientifically and historically true, or to twist its statements into a far-fetched allegory of the truth. Religion will be outmoded; and its tidings of escape
