We have in our souls conceptions
of justice, truth, purity, generosity, and we find the natural law,
which we would fain believe is the law of God, constantly thwarting and
even insulting these conceptions; and yet these conceptions are as real
and vivid to us as the law which takes no account of them. We find
theologians basing their faith on documents which every day appear to
be less and less historical, and on deductions drawn from these
documents by men who believed them to be historical. I have the utmost
sympathy with the position in which theologians find themselves; but
they have mostly their own prudence to thank for it; they are so
cautious about sifting the chaff from the grain, that they will not
throw away the chaff for fear of casting away a single grain. They are
so averse to unsettling the faith of the weak, that the vitality has
ebbed away from the faith of the strong; they have clung so hard to
tradition, that they have obscured fact; they would confine the limbs
of manhood in the garb of childhood; and thus they have forfeited the
confidence of intelligent men, and ranged themselves with the
credulous, the comfortable, and the unenterprising. Intolerant
persecution is out of date, and the question will be solved by the
stranding of the theological hull, owing to the quiet withdrawal of the
vital tide.
XXXIII
My way this afternoon lay through a succession of old hamlets, one
closely bordering on another, that lie all along the base of the wold.
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