Christianity and Paganism
The noted Episcopal clergyman, R. Heber Newton, writes:— “Christianity is but a flower of paganism. Scratch a Russian, and you will find a Tartar; scratch a Christian, and you will find a pagan. Much of our business is conducted on pagan principles. Statecraft of even the most Christian kind is unblushingly pagan. The religion of the educated masses is the superstition of our heathen ancestors, rebaptized with Christian names. If our own church is prepared to justify its ecclesiastical paganism by confessing that it ministers to the pagan classes, let its shame be that it ministers to them still as though they had not been led up out of superstition.” This is true, if slightly modified. If in the first sentence he had said popular Christianity, and in the second had said many a professed Christian, there could be no exception taken. That which is generally called Christianity, is but a slightly modified form of Catholicism, which is indeed but “the superstition of our heathen ancestors, rebaptized with Christian names.” But this is far different from the Christianity of the Bible. We can only wonder why men who make such confessions do not leave the heathen superstitions, and accept “the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.”