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.

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.

“There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ’s moral character, and that is that He believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment.”