The New Gospel

It is a bitter thought, how different a thing the Christianity of the world might have been, if the Christian faith had been adopted as the religion of empire under the auspices of Marcus Aurelius instead of those of Constantine

Think (he [John’s father, James Mill] used to say) of a being who would make a Hell — who would create the human race with the infallible foreknowledge, and therefore with the intention, that the great majority of them were to be consigned to horrible and everlasting torment … that multitudes have held the undoubting belief in an Omnipotent Author of Hell, and have nonetheless identified that being with the best conception that they were able to form a perfect goodness.

[Natural ethics] is disinterested.  It carries the thoughts and feelings out of self, and fixes them on an unselfish object, loved and pursued as an end for its own sake.  The religions which deal in promises and threats regarding a future life, do exactly the contrary … they temp him [man] to regard the performance of his duties to others mainly as a means to his own personal salvation; and are one of the most serious obstacles to the great purpose of moral culture, the strengthening of the unselfish and the weakening of the selfish element in our nature …

Christian morality (so called) has the characters of a reaction … In its horror of sensuality, it made an idol of asceticism, which has been gradually compromised away into one of legality.  It holds out the hope of heaven and the threat of hell, as the appointed and appropriate motives of the virtuous life — in this falling far below the best of the ancients, and doing what lies in it to give to human morality an essentially selfish character … It is essentially a doctrine of passive obedience; it inculcates submission to all authorities found established ...