Author's Preface and Prologue - Page 2

Importance of Hell in the Salvation Scheme
The Right to refuse Atonement
The Teaching of Christianity
Christianity and the Empire

PREFACE ON THE PROSPECTS OF CHRISTIANITY

WHY NOT GIVE CHRISTIANITY A TRIAL?

The question seems a hopeless one after 2000 years of resolute
adherence to the old cry of "Not this man, but Barabbas." Yet it
is beginning to look as if Barabbas was a failure, in spite of
his strong right hand, his victories, his empires, his millions
of money, and his moralities and churches and political
constitutions. "This man" has not been a failure yet; for nobody
has ever been sane enough to try his way. But he has had one
quaint triumph. Barabbas has stolen his name and taken his cross
as a standard. There is a sort of compliment in that. There is
even a sort of loyalty in it, like that of the brigand who breaks
every law and yet claims to be a patriotic subject of the king
who makes them. We have always had a curious feeling that though
we crucified Christ on a stick, he somehow managed to get hold of
the right end of it, and that if we were better men we might try
his plan. There have been one or two grotesque attempts at it by
inadequate people, such as the Kingdom of God in Munster, which
was ended by crucifixion so much more atrocious than the one on
Calvary that the bishop who took the part of Annas went home and
died of horror. But responsible people have never made such
attempts. The moneyed, respectable, capable world has been
steadily anti-Christian and Barabbasque since the crucifixion;
and the specific doctrine of Jesus has not in all that time been
put into political or general social practice. I am no more a
Christian than Pilate was, or you, gentle reader; and yet, like
Pilate, I greatly prefer Jesus to Annas and Caiaphas; and I am
ready to admit that after contemplating the world and human
nature for nearly sixty years, I see no way out of the world's
misery but the way which would have been found by Christ's will
if he had undertaken the work of a modern practical statesman.
Pray do not at this early point lose patience with me and shut
the book. I assure you I am as sceptical and scientific and
modern a thinker as you will find anywhere. I grant you I know a
great deal more about economics and politics than Jesus did, and
can do things he could not do. I am by all Barabbasque standards
a person of much better character and standing, and greater
practical sense. I have no sympathy with vagabonds and talkers
who try to reform society by taking men away from their regular
productive work and making vagabonds and talkers of them too; and
if I had been Pilate I should have recognized as plainly as he
the necessity for