334 Rebelliousness

getting rid of evil, than there can be for his failing to be
everything that he would like to be.

For God is not so white as he is painted, and he gets on
better with the Devil than people think. The Devil is too
useful for him to wish him ill and, in like manner, half the
DeviFs trade would be at an end should any great mishap
bring God well down in the world. For all the mouths they
make at one another they play into each other's hands and
have got on so well as partners, playing Spenlow and Jorkins
to one another, for so many years that there seems no reason
why they should cease to do so. The conception of them as
the one absolutely void of evil and the other of good is a
vulgar notion taken from science whose priests have ever
sought to get every idea and every substance pure of all
alloy.

God and the Devil are about as four to three. There is
enough preponderance of God to make it far safer to be on
his side than on the Devil's, but the excess is not so great as
his professional claqueurs pretend it is. It is like gambling
at Monte Carlo ; if you play long enough you are sure to
lose, but now and again you may win a great deal of excellent
money if you will only cease playing the moment you have
won it.

Christianity

i

As an instrument of warfare against vice, or as a tool for
making virtue, Christianity is a mere flint implement.

ii

Christianity is a woman's religion, invented by women and
womanish men for themselves. The Church's one foundation
is not Christ, as is commonly said, it is woman ; and calling
the Madonna the Queen of Heaven is only a poetical way of
acknowledging that women are the main support of the
priests,

iii

It is not the church in a village that is the source of the
mischief, but the rectory. I would not touch a church from
one end of England to the other.