Letter. 21 - Theology and Science

Summary

H. M. to H. G. A.

Ah! how true it is that Christianity has not, as you say, Christianized the world! There is something curious in the spectacle of the embarrassment of every sect of Christians in accounting for this fact. I know no subject on which there is more miserable floundering among incompatible views and untenable assertions. From those who, with a foregone conclusion, set about estimating how much Christianity has done for the world, to those who give the matter up, and declare the delay to be a mystery of Providence, I find none with whom I can for a moment agree. To me, the wonder would be if it had Christianized the world. Its unfitness for saving the race,—for an universal reception by mankind,—seems to be shown clearly enough by the rise of Mohammedanism, and by the spread of that faith so far beyond the extent that Christianity ever attained as to include, in our day, a fifth part of the whole human race. That religion, imperfect as we see it to be, met needs and gratified faculties, among certain races of men, which Christianity wholly neglected. We are not of the races whose needs could be met by Mohammedanism: nor are we supplied, even on the most superficial view, by what Christianity offers us. As the omission of a provision for the antagonistic at once with the fatalistic faculties of men made Mohammedanism necessary, so the neglect, amounting to discountenance, by Christ, of the domestic passions and affections, nullifies its operation with us.