Archbishop — an ecclesiastical dignitary one point holier than a bishop.
He is of mixed religion, therefore he is godless. He was adopted by Satan himself before he was returned out of fear of his awkwardness.
Is there a father who would persecute his baby with unearned colics and the unearned miseries of teething, and follow these with mumps, measles, scarlet fever, and the hundred other persecutions appointed for the unoffending creature? And then follow these, from youth to the grave, with a multitude of ten-thousandfold punishments for laws broken either by intention or indiscretion? With a fine sarcasm, we ennoble God with the title of Father—yet we know quite well that we should hang His style of father wherever we might catch him.
History shows that in the matter of religions, we progress backward, and not the other way. No matter, there will be a new God and a new religion. They will be introduced to popularity and acceptance with the only arguments that have ever persuaded any people in this earth to adopt Christianity, or any other religion that they werenot born to: the Bible, the sword, the torch, and the axe.
Do I think the Christian religion is here to stay? Why should I think so? There had been a thousand religions before it was born. They are all dead. <...> No. I think that Christianity, and its God, must follow the rule. They must pass on, in their turn, and make room for another God and a stupider religion.
There isn’t anything so grotesque or so incredible that the average human being can’t believe it.
The pulpit and the optimist are always talking about the human race’s steady march toward ultimate perfection. As usual, they leave out the statistics. It is the pulpit’s way—the optimist’s way.
There are one or two curious defects about Bibles. An almost pathetic poverty of invention characterizes them all. That is one striking defect. Another is that each pretends to originality, without possessing any. Each borrows from the others, and gives no credit, which is a distinctly immoral act. Each, in turn, confiscates decayed old stage-properties from the others, and with naïve confidence puts them forth as fresh new inspirations from on high.
Countless persons desire selftranscendence and would be glad to find it in church. But, alas, "the hungry sheep look up and are not fed." They take part in rites, they listen to sermons, they repeat prayers; but their thirst remains unassuaged. Disappointed, they turn to the bottle. For a time at least and in a kind of way, it works. Church may still be attended; but it is no more than the Musical Bank of Butler's Erewhon. God may still be acknowledged; but He is God only on the verbal level, only in a strictly Pickwickian sense. The effective object of worship is the bottle and the sole religious experience is that state of uninhibited and belligerent euphoria which follows the ingestion of the third cocktail.
I come for confession. And the glass... a riot of color in a dreary, grey world.
My gods dwell in temples made with hands; and within the circle of actual experience is my creed made perfect and complete: too complete, it may be, for like many or all of those who have placed their heaven in this earth, I have found in it not merely the beauty of heaven, but the horror of hell also.
It is so easy to convert others to your faith, and it is so difficult to convert yourself.