The one loss that Christianity recognised was the loss of love; the
one punishment it dreaded was the withholding of love.
As Christianity soaked into the world, it became vitiated, and drew
into itself many elements of human weakness. It became a social
force, it learned to depend on property, it fulminated a code of
criminality, and accepted human standards of prosperity and wealth.
It lost its simplicity and became sophisticated. It is hard to say
that men of the world should not, if they wish, claim to be
Christians, but the whole essence of Christianity is obscured if it
is forgotten that its vital attributes are its indifference to
material conveniences, and its emphatic acceptance of sympathy as
the one supreme virtue.
This is but another way of expressing that our troubles and our
terrors alike are based on selfishness, and that if we are really
concerned with the welfare of others we shall not be much concerned
with our own.
The difficulty in adopting the Christian theory is that God does
not apparently intend to cure the world by creating all men
unselfish.
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