He knew he had been humbugged, and he knew also that the greater
part of the ills which had afflicted him were due, indirectly, in
chief measure to the influence of Christian teaching; still, if the
mischief had ended with himself, he should have thought little about
it, but there was his sister, and his brother Joey, and the hundreds
and thousands of young people throughout England whose lives were
being blighted through the lies told them by people whose business
it was to know better, but who scamped their work and shirked
difficulties instead of facing them. It was this which made him
think it worth while to be angry, and to consider whether he could not
at least do something towards saving others from such years of waste
and misery as he had had to pass himself. If there was no truth in the
miraculous accounts of Christ's Death and Resurrection, the whole of
the religion founded upon the historic truth of those events tumbled
to the ground. "Why," he exclaimed, with all the arrogance of youth,
"they put a gipsy or fortune-teller into prison for getting money
out of silly people who think they have supernatural power; why should
they not put a clergyman in prison for pretending that he can
absolve sins, or turn bread and wine into the flesh and blood of One
who died two thousand years ago? What," he asked himself, "could be
more pure 'hanky-panky' than that a bishop should lay his hands upon a
young man and pretend to convey to him the spiritual power to work
this miracle? It was all very well to talk about toleration;
toleration, like everything else, had its limits; besides, if it was
to include the bishop, let it include the fortune-teller too.
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