But let us return to the story of the fall of man; God decides to save
a part of his ruined perfect world by the sacrifice of his son. The
latter is supposed to have said to his father: "Punish me, kill me,
accept my blood, and let it pay for the sins of man." He thus
interceded for the _elect_, and the deity was mollified. As Jesus
is also God, it follows that one God tried to pacify another, which is
pure myth. Some theologians have another theory--there is room here
for many theories. According to these, God gave up his son as a
ransom, not to himself, but to the devil, who now claimed the world as
his own. I heard a distinguished minister explain this in the
following manner: A poor man whose house is mortgaged hears that some
philanthropist has redeemed the property by paying off the mortgage.
The soul of man was by the fall of Adam mortgaged to the devil. God
has raised the mortgage by abandoning his son to be killed to satisfy
the devil who held the mortgage. The debt which we owed has been paid
by Jesus. By this arrangement the devil loses his legal right to our
souls and we are saved. All we need to do is to believe in this story
and we'll be sure to go to heaven. And to think that intelligent
Americans not only accept all this as inspired, but denounce the man
who ventures to intimate modestly that it might be a myth, as a
blasphemer! "O, judgment!" cries Shakespeare, "thou hast fled to
brutish beasts, and men have lost their reason."

The morality which the Christian church teaches is of as mythical a
nature as the story of the fall, and the blood-atonement. It is not
natural morality, but something quite unintelligible and fictitious.
For instance, we are told that we cannot of ourselves be righteous. We
must first have the grace of God. Then we are told that we cannot have
the grace of God unless he gives it to us. And he will not give it to
us unless we ask for it. But we cannot ask for it, unless he moves us