756 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



whether the forms are articles in irrational creeds or outward observ- 

 ances. But can it be maintained that the belief in an All-seeing Eye 

 in infallible, inflexible, and all-powerful justice in a sure reward 

 for well-doing and a sure retribution for evil-doing has been without 

 influence on the conduct of the mass of mankind, or that its departure 

 is likely to be attended by no consequences of importance ? There are 

 two miners, say, by themselves, and far from human eye, in the wilds 

 of the far West : one has found a rich nugget, the other has toiled and 

 found nothing. What hinders the man who has found nothing, if he 

 is the stronger or the better armed, from slaying his mate as he would 

 a buffalo, and taking the gold ? Surely, in part at least, the feeling, 

 drawn from the Christian society in which his youth was passed, that 

 what is not seen by man is seen by God, and that, though the victim 

 himself may be weak and defenseless, irresistible power is on his side. 

 I say in part only ; I say at present only ; and, once more, I do not 

 prejudge the question as to the possible appearance of an independent 

 and self-sustaining morality in the future. We dwell too exclusively 

 on the restraining principle. Who can doubt that religion has, as a 

 matter of fact, largely impelled to virtue ; that it has formed charac- 

 ters at once of great force and of great beneficence ; that it has sus- 

 tained philanthropy and social progress ? Who can doubt that many 

 good and noble works have been, and are still being performed, from 

 love of God and from a love of man which is inspired by belief in our 

 common relations to God ? Who can doubt that heroes and reformers 

 have been led to face peril, to I'isk their lives in the service of their 

 kind, by the conviction that they were doing the Divine will, and that 

 while they were doing it they would be in the Divine keeping ? Would 

 it be so easy even to man a life-boat if all the ideas and all the hopes 

 which center in the village church were taken out of the seaman's 

 heart ? Go to the beach : tell the men that if they sink there will be 

 an end for ever of them, and of their connections with those whom 

 they love ; are you sure that they will not be rather less ready to take 

 an oar ? 



Hundreds of thousands have suffered death for their religion. Is 

 it conceivable that the belief for which they died can have had no 

 influence on their lives ? Is it conceivable that the influence can have 

 been confined to the martyrs ? Is not Christendom almost coextensive 

 with moral civilization ? And does not the whole face of Christendom 

 do not its literature, its art, its architecture, show that religion has 

 been its soul ? So, at least, thought that eminent agnostic who pro- 

 nounced the eighteen centuries of Christianity a retrogression from 

 the happy and scientific age of Tiberius, and by that strange burst of 

 antitheistic frenzy showed that we may have to be on our guard 

 against a fanaticism of hostility to religion as well as against a fanati- 

 cism of religion. 



The opinion of those who are confident that no moral disturbance 



