The thought of Heaven is also injurious to human welfare, because men learn to disregard earth for the sake of “the glory to be revealed.”  People whose “citizenship is in heaven,” make but sorry citizens of earth, for they regard this world as “no continuing city,” while they “seek one to come.”  Hence, as all history shows us, they are apt to despise this world while dreaming about another, to trouble little about earth’s wrongs while thinking of the mansions in the skies; to acquiesce in any assertion that “the whole world lieth in wickedness,” and to trouble themselves but little as to the means of improving it.  From this line of thought follows the long list of monasteries and nunneries, wherein people “separate” themselves from this world in order to “prepare” for another.  All this evil flows directly from the Christian morality which teaches that all hopes, efforts, and aims should be turned towards laying up treasures in heaven, where also the heart should be.  One need scarcely add a word of reprobation as to the horrible doctrine of eternal torture, although that, too, is part of the teaching of Christ.  The whole conscience of civilised mankind is so turning against that shameful and cruel dogma, that it is only now believed among the illiterate and uncultured of the Christians, and soon will be too savage even for them.  It has, however, hardened the hearts of many in days gone by, and has made the burning of heretics seem an appropriate act of faith, since men only began on earth the roasting which God was to continue to all eternity.

The morality of Christ is also faulty because it shares in the persecuting spirit of the Mosaic code.  The disciples are told:  “Whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet.  Verily, I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment, than for that city” (Matt. x. 14, 15).  Christ proclaims openly:  “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth:  I came not to send peace, but a sword.  For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.  And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household” (Ibid, 34-36).  To a man whom he calls to follow him, and who asks to be allowed first to bury his father, Christ gives the brutal reply:  “Let the dead bury their dead:  but go thou and preach the kingdom of God” (Luke x. 60).  Another time he says:  “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple” (Ibid, xiv. 26).  A religion that destroys the home, that introduces discord into the family, that bids its votaries hate all else save Christ, acts as a disintegrating force in human life, and cannot be too strongly opposed.