13/16 Christianity merely caricatures both propositions. Nor do I see how we can attain any worthy ideal of human brotherhood while this Christianity prevails: We must be sheep and goats among ourselves, some in heaven, some in hell, still seeking out reasons "Why the Saints in Glory Should Rejoice at the Sufferings of the Damned." We shall be saints and sinners, sated and starving. A God who separates them in some future life will have children that separate themselves here upon His own very excellent authority. That is why one brother of us must work himself to death while another idles himself to death--because God has set a difference, and his Son after him, and the Church after that. The defect in social Christendom to-day, sir, is precisely this defect of the Christian faith--its separation, its failure to teach what it chiefly boasts of teaching. |