Christian Priest. -- At least, belief is the safe side. When you die, if your unbelief be right, there is an end of you and of all your heresy; and if it is wrong, there is eternal torment as your sad lot.
Unbeliever -- Hardly so. If I am right, my un-belief will live after me, in its encouragement to others to honest protest against the superstitions which hinder progress.
Christian Priest -- But you, at any rate, may be wrong, and belief is, therefore, safest for you.
Unbeliever. -- Which belief? Must I accept alike all creeds?
Christian Priest -- No; that is not possible. You are asked to accept the true Christian faith.
Unbeliever. -- Why not the true Jewish faith?
Christian Priest -- A new dispensation was given through Jesus.
Unbeliever. -- Why not the true Mahommedan faith?
Christian Priest -- Mahommed was an imposter.
Unbeliever. -- About two hundred millions of human beings now believe that he was the prophet of God, and that the Koran is a divine revelation.
Christian Priest -- He was a false prophet. His pretence that the Koran was revelation was an imposture.
Unbeliever. -- Then it would not be safe for me to believe in Mahommed?
Christian Priest -- Certainly not; you must believe in Christ and in the Gospels.
Unbeliever. -- Would it not be enough to believe in Buddha, and the blessing of eternal repose in Nirvana?
Christian Priest -- Buddhism is the equivalent of Atheism. Nirvana is another word for annihilation.
Unbeliever. -- But some four hundred millions are Buddhists, and the character of Buddha is placed very high.
Christian Priest -- The true faith is that in Jesus, and in him crucified.
Unbeliever. -- Do you mean the man Jesus in whom the Unitarians believe?
Christian Priest -- Unitarians! Do you not know that there is a spcial canon of the law-established Church against the dammable and cursed heresie of Socinianism"? It is belief in Jesus as God, the second person in the Holy Trinity.
Unbeliever. -- In the Trinity as painted at Holyrood? or in the new Cathedral at Moscow?
Christian Priest -- It is the Trinity as taught in the New Testament you must believe. The paintings you refer to are profane, idolatrous, and blasphemous.
Unbeliever. -- But have not the latest revisers omitted from the New Testament, as being a pious fraud, the strongest Trinitarian text?
Christian Priest -- The omission does not weaken the doctrine; the Trinity in Unity must be believed.
Unbeliever. -- But not painted. May it be thought?
Christian Priest -- Of course.
Unbeliever. -- But can I think man who is God, who is begotten yet eternal?
Christian Priest -- You must believe in the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, three in one.
Unbeliever. -- Are there in the Trinity three persons, each God?
Christian Priest -- Yes; but there is only one God, who so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son to die for it.
Unbeliever. -- Is Jesus the only begotten son of God
Christian Priest -- Yes; begotten before all worlds.
Unbeliever. -- Is Jesus God?
Christian Priest -- Yes; very God of very God
Unbeliever. -- Had Jesus a mother?
Christian Priest -- Yes; the Virgin Mary.
Unbeliever. -- When did she live?
Christian Priest -- About 1,900 years ago.
Unbeliever. -- Was that before all worlds?
Christian Priest -- Your attempt to reason will lead you to heresy; Belief without reason is the safe side.
Unbeliever. -- Did Jesus die?
Christian Priest -- Yes.
Unbeliever. -- Was he quite dead?
Christian Priest -- Yes.
Unbeliever. -- After he was quite dead did he eat and drink?
Christian Priest -- He first came to life again.
Unbeliever. -- How long was he really dead before he came to life again?
Christian Priest -- He died on Friday, and rose from the dead before dawn on Sunday.
Unbeliever. -- So that God, to show his love for the world, let his only son die for one whole day, part of another day, and not quite two nights?
Christian Priest -- That is indeed blasphemy as well as heresy; believe as the Church teaches, that in the grave Christ triumphed over death.
Unbeliever. -- Which Church? The Episcopalian, the Presbyterian, the Free Church, the Established Church, the Lutheran Church, the Calvinist, the Roman Catholic, the Methodist -- which of these is the safest?
Christian Priest -- There is only one true Church, that as by law established.
Unbeliever. -- But as interpreted by Colenso? by Mackonochie? by Convocation? or by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council?
Christian Priest -- Do not distress me with these doubts. At any rate believe in Christ as taught in the Gospel.
Unbeliever. -- Which version of the Gospel, that of Rheims? Or the authorised version of King James? Or the revised version of the present day?
Christian Priest -- Do not raise these quibbles as to versions; have faith.
Unbeliever. -- In what or whom?
Christian Priest -- In God our father in heaven.
Unbeliever. -- The father of the English and the Soudanese? Of the French and the Hovas? Of the Boer and the Zulu?
Christian Priest -- The Father of all.
Unbeliever. -- Who, having the power to prevent war, permits it? Who, being able to hinder disease, promotes it?
Christian Priest -- These are mysteries; be content to believe and trust.
Unbeliever. -- In God who sent the earthquake in Java? The cholera in Marseilles and Toulon?
Christian Priest -- Doubt is dangerous, belief is safe, your puny intellect cannot measure the infinite.
Unbeliever. -- Will all unbelievers in Jesus be tormented eternally?
Christian Priest -- Yes.
Unbeliever. -- Is not that unfair to the millions who are unbelievers because they have never heard of Jesus except as I may hear of Obi?
Christian Priest -- God will be merciful to those who have not heard the gospel, and therefore cannot believe.
Unbeliever. -- Is not that, then, very hard on the one who is an unbeliever because having heard the Gospel he cannot believe it?
Christian Priest -- You are now judging the rule of the omnipotent, measuring the plan of the all-wise; be content to believe.
Unbeliever. -- Will those who have never heard the Gospel escape despite their unbelief?
Christian Priest -- I have said God is merciful; he will punish those who, having heard, reject.
Unbeliever. -- But do not your Church and many other Christian Churches send missionaries to preach the Gospel to those who have not heard it?
Christian Priest -- Yes, our missionaries to heathen lands are the glory of all our Churches.
Unbeliever. -- But do they not thus take the possibility of damnation to those who would otherwise escape? The Christian Priest here turned away despairingly.
Christian Priest -- Believe in Jesus and be saved.
Unbeliever. -- Were the immediate disciples of Jesus saved?
Christian Priest -- Certainly, except perhaps Judas, but why the doubt?
Unbeliever. -- Thomas would not believe (John xx. 25); was he damned?
Christian Priest -- Even he believed at last; believe and repent.
Unbeliever. -- No, when he had evidence (v. 27) he knew; you ask me to believe upon grounds satisfactory to you; like Thomas I claim to examine for myself. Thomas said: "I will not believe," I say that I cannot believe. But those that were with Jesus (Mark xvi. ii) believed not, nor when two of the disciples told the residue that they had seen Jesus, "neither believed they" (v. I3); were these saved?
Christian Priest -- They all believed when they saw Jesus.
Unbeliever. -- But is not actual seeing more than mere belief? If not, may I see? When the disciples actually saw Jesus they surely scarcely deserved eternal salvation because they saw? They could not help seeing.
Christian Priest -- But Jesus himself taught that he that believe th and is baptised shall be saved, but that he that believeth not shall be damned.
Unbeliever. -- Did Jesus certainly teach this? In my revised version, printed at the Oxford University Press, I read that "the two oldest Greek manuscripts and some other authorities" omit these words.
Christian Priest -- Leave those critical questions to scholars; be humble in spirit, and have faith.
Unbeliever. -- In what? or whom?
Christian Priest -- In Jesus.
Unbeliever. -- But the disciples who knew him intimately had small faith in Jesus. When he was arrested "they all forsook him and fled" (Mark xiv. 50), and it is pretended that those very ones who so forsook him had seen Jesus feed the hungry, cure the sick, make the blind to see, the lame to walk, and the dead rise again to life.
Christian Priest -- Do not say pretended; that is blasphemy.
Unbeliever. -- But did Peter really see dead Lazarus raised again to life, and yet deny? Was John the son of Zebedee, the disciple whom Jesus loved, and did he run away at the first approach of danger? Would not this be the veriest hardihood and audacity of disbelief?
Christian Priest -- These things are mysteries; leave these and believe.
Unbeliever. -- But these disciples who did not believe were all specially selected by Jesus himself; did he know that they would be unbelievers, and that their unbelief would hinder my faith?
Christian Priest -- You are now setting up the pride of your reason against the things of God; be as a little child; of such is the kingdom of heaven.
Unbeliever. -- Was Jesus a young child, and did he grow through boyhood to manhood?
Christian Priest -- Yes, so the Gospel teaches.
Unbeliever. -- And must I believe that he was a God whilst he was a young child?
Christian Priest -- He was God incarnate to suffer and redeem.
Unbeliever. -- And whilst a child still God. Then are the legends I find in every ancient faith of God-born children who grew through childhood into manhood, and were Gods -- are these, too, to be believed?
Christian Priest -- No, they are false religious legends -- myths the infant Bacchus, or Hor, or Hercules, these are mostly sun-myths.
Unbeliever. -- Mostly older, though, than the myth of Jesus; how do you make the modem copy truer than the ancient fable?
Christian Priest -- If you call Jesus myth, how do you account for Christianity?
Unbeliever. -- Calling, as you do, Hor myth, how do you account for Osirianism? Calling Krishna myth, how do you account for Hinduism?
Christian Priest -- But think of the great men who have believed in Jesus.
Unbeliever. -- And of the great men who have believed in Mahommed, Buddha, Ra, and Agni. It is in their creeds that great men are often very weakly.
Christian Priest -- But Christianity is spreading all over the world, other religions are dying away.
Unbeliever. -- It would be more true to say that all religions are dying away. Christianity spreads where your canon take it, and where your bayonet keeps it; see in Zululand, in Afghanistan; it exterminates where it has foothold, as amongst the Maories, the Fijians, the Hawaiians, the Hovas. But does it so surely spread at home?
Christian Priest -- Certainly; what do you mean?
Unbeliever. -- In England the majority of your population from cradle to grave, save for baptism, marriage or funeral, never enter Church or Chapel; in Ireland, Catholics, more devout, shoot landlords. and Ulster Protestants, more pious, shoot Nationalists. In Italy scarce a prominent man who is not avowedly indifferent or hostile to Christianity. In France the public men are most careless of religion or repudiate it. In Germany the educated are nearly all Freethinkers, the pious nearly all soldiers.
Christian Priest -- Do not talk of the Continent; its inhabitants are Sabbath-breakers.
Unbeliever. -- Shall I limit Christianity to the few in these islands, and look at home, say in outcast London, Ratliff Highway, or the Mint, or Flower and Dean Street, or the old Sanctuary? Amongst the very poor and miserable in the still undestroyed narrow courts of Drury Lane? Or shall I take the outcast rich in the public streets about midnight, within half a mile of Westminster Abbey? Are these the fruits of eighteen centuries of Christianity?
Christian Priest -- These are sins and shames against which our Church ever labours; look to our Christian-founded hospitals and libraries.
Unbeliever. -- But these have grown since civilisation has compelled them. The crime and your Church have dwelt together for centuries. In Rome, Paris, London, great piety, great riches, great crime, and your Church, always mighty for evil and mostly powerless for good.
Christian Priest -- I cannot listen: these things are not true; it is unjust to put on the Church the sins of great cities where infidelity is rampant.
Unbeliever. -- But it is the pious in these cities who are fashionable and criminal; and there are terrors of crime which touch your Church even in its highest ranks. Heresy, or as you call it, infidelity, has during 300 years done something to purify -- the corruption is part of your history. But take, too, your agricultural districts where, even to-day, there would be scant mercy for an infidel preacher, and reach me your assize calendars and total for me the record of your ordinary and of your nameless crimes. Is this the result of 1800 years of your Church?
Christian Priest -- No, this is the natural wickedness of man; and if you destroy our faith what will you give us in its stead?
Unbeliever. -- Where is your faith recorded? and is your natural inclination to wickedness God-given?
Christian Priest -- It is in the Bible, God's word, you will find our faith; with what will you replace it? Man has a free will; do not blasphemously put his sins on God.
Unbeliever. -- But do you believe and practise the Bible? Do you imitate Abraham -- father Abraham? or Lot? or Jacob? or Saul? or David? or Solomon? or Ezekiel? or Hosea?
Christian Priest -- These were of the old dispensation; I preach Jesus.
Unbeliever. -- Then you, too, do put away as it suits you a large part of the Bible but you keep to Jesus.
Christian Priest -- Yes; and what will you give me in his stead?
Unbeliever. -- Do you keep to Jesus? The Jesus of the Gospels said, Blessed be ye poor; and your Church is rich. He said, take no thought for the morrow and your Ecclesiastical Commissioners, have stringent covenants for 99 years of to-morrows. He said, thou shalt not swear; you swear yourselves, and compel others, too, to swear. He said, judge not, and agree with thine adversary quickly; and you rely on Lord Penzance, monitions, sequestrations, capiases, and long-pending litigation. if Jesus came to-day to St, Paul's Cathedral or Westminster Abbey, you would probably send him on the morrow to Holloway jail as a brawler.
Christian Priest -- Why harden your heart in unbelief? Why not receive the Gospel prayerfully and humbly?
Unbeliever. -- Does that mean that I should accept what you call the gospel without trying to find out whether such gospel is truth or error, or a mixture of both?
Christian Priest -- The gospel is God's word to humankind; to doubt it is to sin.
Unbeliever. -- How am I to be satisfied of that?
Christian Priest -- The very desire for satisfaction is sin. The gospel is attested by miracle, and has been accepted by the wisest and best of mankind.
Unbeliever. -- But the miracle itself has not been worked to me; if I may not examine it how can it attest? There are many millions who have not accepted the gospel you preach. What is the evidence to me of a miracle dating back nearly twenty centuries, and performed before a foreign people?
Christian Priest -- The whole testimony of the Church. Indeed God speaks.
Unbeliever. -- But I do not hear; and is the testimony of the Church even to-day unanimous?
Christian Priest -- On the main points, yes; the doctrinal differences between the various Christian sects are trifling.
Unbeliever. -- If that be really so, why do not the various religious bodies, say, in England, sink these trifling differences and unite in one Church?
Christian Priest -- For practical purposes there is that union.
Unbeliever. -- Is that quite true? Are Roman Catholics united with Protestants? Do they freely preach from each other's pulpits? Do Church of England clergymen willingly bury unbaptised Nonconformists in consecrated ground? Is there perfect concord and unity between the Tablet, the Church Times, and the Rock? Did the Bishop of Capetown work in harmony with Dr. Colenso? Do even devout Low-Churchmen who promote law-suits against Ritualists give illustration of such union?
Christian Priest -- At least in all good work these bodies, prelates and writers, sink all minor differences and are united. Take hospitals, the promotion of temperance, the abolition of slavery, and other charitable undertakings.
Unbeliever. -- But in a Catholic hospital would a Protestant Christian be allowed to die quietly in his heresy? And how long has the union existed? Your Christianity is claimed to be in its nineteenth century, and the union of the great Catholic and Protestant divisions of your Church is in this country not yet sixty years old even in possibility. The approach to toleration of each other has been compelled by educated public opinion; it is no natural outgrowth. Rack, faggot, and dungeon marked the differences, not the union. Nor did your churches unite for the abolition of slavery; if they united at all it was to oppose the abolition. It is not even quite certain that they are temperate, or that as a whole they have worked for temperance.
Christian Priest -- You are leaving untouched the entreaty I made to you that you should accept the gospel prayerfully and humbly. You are drifting into criticisms on the conduct of individuals, some of them unworthy of their priestly office.
Unbeliever. -- Why may I not judge the tree by its fruit? Why may I not examine your gospel before I accept it?
Christian Priest -- It is God's gospel, the gospel of Jesus -- this should be enough for you.
Unbeliever. -- Am I not entitled to test it by my reason?
Christian Priest -- Human reason is a dangerous and unsafe standard whereby to test heavenly things.
Unbeliever. -- You present for my acceptance the gospel of Christ; well, I offer you the gospel of Krishna.
Christian Priest -- You have no authority for this; it is a false gospel.
Unbeliever. -- What authority have you? Krishna was God incarnate.
Christian Priest -- The very suggestion is blasphemy; the story was borrowed from the Christian gospel.
Unbeliever. -- But the Krishna story was current at least 1000 years before Christ is claimed to have existed. It is vouched by miracle.
Christian Priest -- The Hindoo miracles are absurd and ridiculous.
Unbeliever. -- So to me are those of your own bible; so to me are those of the Christian healer who is now in South Australia curing the sick by hundreds.
Christian Priest -- Many of the Hindoo sacred writings are coarse, voluptuous, and even filthy.
Unbeliever. -- So to me are many of the Hebrew sacred writings.
Christian Priest -- The Krishna story is monstrous and unreasonable.
Unbeliever. -- But you have taught me that human reason is a dangerous and unsafe guide in matters of religion. But I pass to the Koran offered to you by Mahommed, the prophet of the Lord.
Christian Priest -- Mahommed was a false prophet and impostor.
Unbeliever. -- Is not that exactly what the Jews said of Jesus?
Christian Priest -- But Mahommedanism has for centuries been maintained and spread by the sword.
Unbeliever. -- So was Christianity from the 4th to the 16th centuries; and even to-day a Christian bishop blesses an invading army, declaring that it may cut a road for the Christian missionary.
Christian Priest -- But Mahommedans are fatalists.
Unbeliever. -- So were Luther, Calvin, and Jonathan Edwards.
Christian Priest -- Oh, do not harden your heart; repent of your unbelief and believe. God is merciful, and will forgive you.
Unbeliever. -- Do you mean that God, having blinded my eyes, will forgive me if I repent that I have not seen, and if I will believe that I see when I do not? Or do you mean that having given me sight and hearing he will punish me for having seen and listened unless I will repent and believe that I am blind and deaf?
Christian Priest -- These are quibbles, hardened man; dare you reject God's truth?
Unbeliever. -- Reject God's truth spoken from opposite points with opposite meanings and in irreconcilable terms? How can I choose, how determine which is the truth if I may not examine and test all presentation? I may test a coin, a jewel, an the acquirement of which I only expend the results of a day, a week, or a month, but I may not test the jewel on the acceptance or rejection of which you say depends the happiness of an eternity. I cannot see in the black underground of hidden things, I must have light.
Christian Priest. -- At least, this anniversary of the message of peace and good-will to all the world should touch even your cold heart.
Skeptic. -- Was the message of peace and good-will? and was it to all the world?
Christian Priest -- Why, surely yes. God so loved the world that he gave his only son to die for it.
Skeptic. -- Could he not have shown his love without killing his own son?
Christian Priest -- That is mystery; take his love -- it is given freely.
Skeptic. -- Given or bought? Do the poor get this gift of love to lighten their misery? Given or taken? Do the weak get this gift of love to aid their helplessness?
Christian Priest -- Yes, it is for all, but especially for the poor and the weak; theirs is the blessing.
Skeptic. -- Is that quite true of the country , poor in cottages quite unfit for human dwellings, or of the town poor in filthy court and squalid alley? Is that quite true of the weaker races scattered through the world, kidnapped and harried for the greed of their stronger Christian brethren?
Christian Priest -- Here man's wickedness hinders God's love.
Skeptic. -- Can finite man's wickedness hinder omnipotent God's infinite goodness?
Christian Priest -- This, again, is mystery; but it is rather of the eternal future I would speak.
Skeptic. -- Peace and good-will for the dead as set-off for war and malice amongst the living.
Christian Priest -- True Christianity would in this world abolish war and uproot malice.
Skeptic. -- Would it? Why, then, do Christian nations make larger preparations for war than were ever made by any Pagan peoples? Why do these gathered in Christian churches pray for victory in war, and sing Te Deum laudamus when the carnage has been great?
Christian Priest -- I said true Christianity, and you deal only with those who are mere professors.
Skeptic. -- But then there is no professedly Christian nation which is really Christian. Then there has never been any professedly Christian nation which has been really Christian, for every so-called Christian people has had the priest-blessed wars.
Christian Priest -- Alas! they have departed from the Gospel.
Skeptic. -- Or kept too closely to its injunctions. They have remembered that Jesus came to fulfil the law and the prophets, and that the law and the prophets brim over with great slaughterings by the Lord's people in the name of the Lord.
Christian Priest -- It is of the peace and good-will of the new covenant I would speak.
Skeptic. -- Which made a man's foes of his own household, instead as theretofore only of the nations that are round about him.
Christian Priest -- But Jesus meant a message of peace.
Skeptic. -- And unfortunately intentionally so preached it that even those who heard him should not understand his meaning, lest they should be converted.
Christian Priest -- But look at the countries where Christianity is triumphant.
Skeptic. -- Yes, begin at home: Ireland held like a conquered province by an occupying army and speaking peace at night by the blunderbuss through cottage windows; Scotland, land of Knox, where crofters starve and deer multiply; England, which kidnaps coolies, steals South African territories and blows Arabs suddenly to heaven with mines; Germany with a pious Emperor and the largest army in the world; Spain with a monarchy tempered by poison, and Rome with a Church sanctified by brigandage.
Christian Priest -- These again are men's sins for which God will punish.
Skeptic. -- Yes, but where is the message of peace and good-will? Just now. we are shipping explosives to the Soudan, to destroy the followers of the Mahdi, and are watching every vessel and searching every package lest. some of our loving Christian brethren should preach to us the gospel of nitroglycerin. Is it not cant and hypocrisy to pretend to be better than the mad and criminal men who tried to destroy London Bridge, whilst we have laboratories at Woolwich and, elsewhere for the manufacture of torpedoes and explosive shells?
Is it not cant and hypocrisy to preach peace and good-will on Christmas Day when your navy and army at home and in India cost more than 45,000,000 pounds a year and you in Britain alone have spent in war during the last 200 years more than 2,000,000,000 pounds?
Theist -- Surely your Atheism is most unreasonable. How can the universe exist without God?
Atheist -- What do you mean by "God"? and What by Universe?
Theist -- By God, the creator, preserver, and ruler of all things. By the universe, all that he has created.
Atheist -- What do you mean by creation?
Theist -- Origination -- beginning.
Atheist -- A chair is originated from the wood of a tree; a stalagmite is begun by the water dripping through from the limestone.
Theist -- Those are instances of change of form. By creation I mean origin of existence.
Atheist -- Do you mean that once the universe was not, and that what you call "God" created the universe?
Theist -- Yes
Atheist -- By universe I mean all phenomena, and all that is necessary for the happening of each and every phenomenon. I cannot think the universe non-existent -- can you?
Theist -- The universe must have had a commencement.
Atheist -- Why? Why may it not always have existed?
Theist -- Everything must have had a beginning.
Atheist -- Even the Creator?
Theist -- No; he is eternal.
Atheist -- Why he? and what do you mean by eternal?
Theist -- Not to think a personal deity is Atheistic, and the deity is self-existent. By eternal I mean without beginning.
Atheist -- But even if deity must be personal, why masculine? and how do you think masculine person self-existent?
Theist -- All religions make God a masculine person. I cannot help thinking God self-existent.
Atheist -- But are all religions true?
Theist -- Truth pervades them all, but there is only one true religion.
Atheist -- Then the pervading truth does not save the great mass of religions from falseness. But if you can think God self-existent, why may I not think universe self-existent?
Theist -- The universe is finite; God is infinite.
Atheist -- Then there exists infinity plus the finite universe. By infinite I mean illimitable extension, indefinable extent; that is, extension of x, to which I cannot think bounds. You say God is infinite. Infinite what?
Theist -- Infinite God.
Atheist -- But what is God?
Theist -- I have already answered; the creator, preserver, and ruler of all things.
Atheist -- But five minutes before the creation of anything what was God?
Theist -- God is a spirit.
Atheist -- But what is spirit?
Theist -- All that is not matter.
Atheist -- Five minutes before the creation of matter what was spirit?
Theist -- The question is monstrous.
Atheist -- Only because it is the test of a monstrous misstatement.
Theist -- But if there be no God, whence came intelligence?
Atheist -- Intelligence is not an entity; it is a result, and an ever-changing result.
Theist -- What do you mean?
Atheist -- Intelligence = all mental phases, -- perception, including consciousness, memory, comparison, judgement, reflection, reason. Intelligence does not come from, or go to; it grows with and of. Unless you change the meaning of words, God is not properly describable as intelligent.
Theist -- Why?
Atheist -- The basis of intelligence is in sensation. Prior to creation what could God sensate?
Theist -- You cannot compass God with finite terms and by your finite mind.
Atheist -- Yet you preach God in finite terms and to any finite mind.
Theist -- Your Atheism is mere negation.
Atheist -- Not so, except as the affirmation of any truth negates the falsehood it contradicts.
Theist -- Your Atheism leads men to vice.
Atheist -- First, that is rather abuse than argument, and if true, would scarcely demonstrate the existence of God. Are all Theists virtuous?
Theist -- Unfortunately not.
Atheist -- Are most criminals theists?
Theist -- They profess religion, but they are practical Atheists.
Atheist -- The last statement is again abuse. Are all Atheists vicious?
Theist -- No; they are, many of them, better than their principles.
Atheist -- That, again, is abuse, unless you state the Atheistic principles which you allege lead to vice.
Theist -- Why should not an Atheist lie and steal and cheat, if he can do it without being found out?
Atheist -- Why should he? It is easier to tell the truth than to lie, especially if you cultivate the habit of truth-telling; stealing and cheating are practices of social misdoing which involve at least the possibility of being discovered. An Atheist cannot clear himself from rascality by repentance. He. finds it much more comfortable and profitable to encourage habits of truthfulness and honesty in others by practising them himself.
Theist -- But this is a low and selfish vice.
Atheist -- Is it? It is a view which, if extensively adopted, would afford ground for economy in jail chaplains, who would not be required to preach to orthodox convicts.
Curate. -- God so loved the world that he gave his only son to die for it.
Doubter -- When?
Curate -- Jesus died somewhere about 1,850 Years ago.
Doubter -- For what did Jesus die?
Curate -- To redeem the world from the consequences of Adam's sin.
Doubter -- When did Adam sin?
Curate -- About 4,000 years before the birth of Jesus.
Doubter -- If God so loved the world, why did he delay the redemption for 4,000 years?
Curate -- That is not for finite minds to judge.
Doubter -- Yet you teach that finite minds must believe without judgement. But was Adam punished for his sin?
Curate -- Yes.
Doubter -- Is it just to punish one who is not guilty for a sin for which Adam suffered?
Curate -- But the penalty was a curse which passed on to Adam's descendants, and it is from this curse that the sacrifice of Jesus redeemed the world.
Doubter -- Does the redemption extend to the whole world?
Curate -- Yes, if they believe, and are baptised.
Doubter -- What was Adam's sin?
Curate -- He disobeyed God.
Doubter -- Is God all-powerful?
Curate -- Yes.
Doubter -- Did he create and control Adam?
Curate -- Yes.
Doubter -- Can the creature disobey the omnipotent controller?
Curate -- God gave man liberty.
Doubter -- Liberty to fall?
Curate -- If Adam had chosen, he might have stood upright; God gave him the noblest gifts. Through Adam's own fault he fell.
Doubter -- Before Adam's fall, could he distinguish good from evil?
Curate -- No.
Doubter -- How then could he choose between them?
Curate -- He had God's command to guide him.
Doubter -- Do the commands of the omnipotent guide or compel? Can the irresistible be resisted?
Curate -- You forget man had free will.
Doubter -- Do you mean that God being infinite, his will was everywhere omnipotent, but that in some places and under some circumstances Adam's will was stronger than that of God?
Curate -- No. I mean that omnipotent God allowed man to be free.
Doubter -- That is, that God, being able to prevent sin would not. But in human morals, is not one who knows of a crime about to be committed, and who might prevent it and does not -- is not such a one treated as accessory before the fact? and in legal jargon is not an accessory before the fact treated as if a principal in the crime?
Curate -- God's ways are not as man's ways.
Doubter -- But is not acquiescence in crime criminal?
Curate -- God did not acquiesce in Adam's crime.
Doubter -- He did more than acquiesce, he contrived the crime.
Curate -- That is blasphemy.
Doubter -- Is God omniscient?
Curate -- Yes.
Doubter -- Did he, before he created Adam, know that Adam would sin?
Curate -- Yes.
Doubter -- Have any of the millions of people, who have peopled the world since Adam, died unredeemed by Jesus?
Curate -- Yes, the large majority die unredeemed. The holy scriptures say, "Few are chosen."
Doubter -- And did God know this before he created any?
Curate -- Yes.
Doubter -- And did he then so love the world that he created them to suffer by unnumbered millions?
Curate -- That is a difficulty a finite mind cannot grasp.
Doubter -- And yet you teach that the finite mind is to suffer if it cannot believe. Was there any existence beside God before creation?
Curate -- Certainly not.
Doubter -- Is God infinitely good?
Curate -- Most certainly yes.
Doubter -- Then before creation there was no evil?
Curate -- No.
Doubter -- Is it compatible with God's infinite goodness that he should have created evil?
Curate -- This again is beyond the sphere of finite reason, and you Materialists have equal difficulty. You have evil in Nature; how do you account for that?
Doubter -- Which evil? Or which evils? Some, science does account for, others she is examining. Take, for instance, the Lisbon or Java earthquake: science notes the shocks, marks the range, warns the inhabitants, and, though knowing but little, adds daily to her knowledge. Take the evils of poverty, crime, disease: science has studied a thousand theories, connoted the experience of generations, and at least does not kneel blindly before disaster, but grapples in earnest effort; for amelioration. But the Materialist's inability to explain the whole of Nature does not justify your inability to explain the creed to which you ask my adhesion.