ABSTRACT

Christianity threatens us with persecution here and damnation hereafter if we do not believe its doctrines. 'He that believeth not shall be damned', says Jesus. 'He that believeth not shall be imprisoned and pick oakum', says Mr. Justice North. The unregenerated sceptic has many qualms and difficulties in connexion with tiiis story of the baptism of Jesus. Isaiah is by far the finest and least objectionable of the seventeen prophets whose supposed productions form the latter part of the Old Testament. The story of "John the Baptist" and of the relations existing between him and Jesus is one which it is very difficult to relate without falling into blasphemy, for the accounts given in the four gospels contradict each other in most remarkable fashion. The old hateful doctrines of the right of men to own men, and of the duty of persecution, are endorsed by the New Testament as well as by the Old.