This puzzled me; the charges seemed inconsistent.

Christianity could not at once be the black mask on a white world, and also the white mask on a black world.

The state of the Christian could not be at once so comfortable that he was a coward to cling to it, and so uncomfortable that he was a fool to stand it.

If it falsified human vision it must falsify it one way or another; it could not wear both green and rose-coloured spectacles.

I rolled on my tongue with a terrible joy, as did all young men of that time, the taunts which Swinburne hurled at the dreariness of the creed-- "Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilaean, the world has grown gray with Thy breath." But when I read the same poet's accounts of paganism (as in "Atalanta"), I gathered that the world was, if possible, more gray before the Galilaean breathed on it than afterwards.