Mathias’s Reviews > Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects > Status Update

McGeehan’s reaction reminds one of a cartoon which became famous in the early years of this century when Anthony Comstock, one of the judge’s spiritual ancestors, was campaigning against pictures and statues depicting the undraped human form. It showed Comstock dragging a woman into a courtroom and saying to the judge, ‘Your Honor, this woman gave birth to a naked child.

The world in which we live can be understood as a result of muddle and accident; but if it is the outcome of deliberate purpose, the purpose must have been that of a fiend. For my part, I find accident a less painful and more plausible hypothesis.

It is amusing to hear the modern Christian telling you how mild and rationalistic Christianity really is, and ignoring the fact that all its mildness and rationalism is due to the teaching of men who in their own day were persecuted by all orthodox Christians.