AN APPEAL TO THE CLERGY 353
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Thus it is with those who profess your doctrines ; but there are others, who have emancipated them- selves from those doctrines : the so-called unbelievers.
They (though in most cases more moral in their lives than the majority of those who profess Church doc- trines), as a result of the spiritual taint to which they were exposed in their childhood, have an influence on their neighbours which is worse even than that of those who profess your teachings. They are specially harmful because, having in childhood shared the mis- fortune of the rest of the inhabitants of Christendom and been trained in the Church frauds, they have so identified Church teachings with Christianity in their own perception, that they now cannot distinguish the one from the other, and in rejecting the false Church teaching throw away with it that true Christian teach- ing which it has hidden. ,
These people, detesting the fraud that has caused them so much suffering, preach not only the useless- ness but the harmfulness of Christianity, and not of Christianity only, but of any religion whatever.
Religion, in their perception, is a remnant of super- stition, which may have been of use to people once, but now is simply harmful. And so their doctrine is, that the quicker and more completely people free themselves from every trace of religious consciousness, the better it will be.
And preaching this emancipation from all religion, they — including among them most educated and learned men, who, therefore, have the greatest authority with people searching for the truth — consciously or un- consciously become most harmful preachers of moral laxity.
By suggesting to people that the most important mental characteristic of rational creatures — that of ascertaining their relation to the Source of all things,
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