THE ETHICS OF RELIGION. 



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find very wide acceptance among our countrymen 

 at the present day : the doctrines of original sin, 

 of a vicarious sacrifice, and of eternal punish- 

 ments. We are not concerned with any refined 

 evaporations of these doctrines which are exhaled 

 by courtly theologians, but with the naked state- 

 ments which are put into the minds of children 

 and of ignorant people, which are taught broad- 

 cast and without shame in denominational schools. 

 Father Faber, good soul, persuaded himself that 

 after all only a very few people would be really 

 damned, and Father Oxenham gives one the im- 

 pression that it will not hurt even them very 

 much. But one learns the practical teaching of 

 the Church from such books as "A Glimpse of 

 Hell," where a child is described as thrown be- 

 tween the bars upon the burning coals, there to 

 writhe forever. The masses do not get the ele- 

 gant emasculations of Father Faber and Father 

 Oxenham ; they get " a Glimpse of Hell." 



Now, to condemn all mankind for the sin of 

 Adam and Eve; to let the innocent suffer for the 

 guilty ; to keep any one alive in torture for ever 

 and ever: these actions are simply magnified 

 copies of what bad men do. No juggling with 

 " divine justice and mercy" can make them any- 

 thing else. This must be said to all kinds and 

 conditions of men : that if God holds all man- 

 kind guilty for the sin of Adam, if he has visited 

 upon the innocent the punishment of the guilty, 

 if he is to torture any single soul forever, then it 

 is wrong to worship him. 



But there is something to be said, also, to 

 those who think that religious beliefs are not in- 

 deed true, but are useful for the masses ; who 

 deprecate any open and public argument against 

 them, and think that all skeptical books should 

 be published at a high price; who go to church, 

 not because they approve of it themselves, but to 

 set an example to the servants. Let us ask them 

 to ponder the words of Plato, who, like them, 

 thought that all these tales of the gods were 

 fables, but still fables which might be useful to 

 amuse children with: " We ought to esteem it of 

 the greatest importance that the fictions which chil- 

 dren first hear should be adapted in the most per- 

 fect manner to the promotion of virtue.'''' If we 

 grant to you that it is good for poor people and 

 children to believe some of these fictions, is it not 

 better, at least, that they should believe those 

 which are adapted to the promotion of virtue? 

 Now, the stories which you send your servants 

 and children to hear are adapted to the promo- 

 tion of vice. So far as the remedy is in your own 

 hands, you are bound to apply it ; stop your vol- 



untary subscriptions and the moral support of 

 your presence from any place where the criminal 

 doctrines are taught. You will find more men 

 and better men to preach that which is agreeable 

 to their conscience, than to thunder out doctrines 

 under which their miuds are always uneasy, and 

 which only a continual self-deception can keep 

 them from feeling to be wicked. 



Let us now go on to inquire what morality 

 has to say in the matter of religious ministrations, 

 the official acts and the general influence of a 

 priesthood. This question seems to me a more 

 difficult one than the former ; at any rate it is 

 not so easy to find general principles which are 

 at once simple in their nature and clear to the 

 conscience of any man who honestly considers 

 them. One such principle, indeed, there is, which 

 can hardly be stated in a Protestant country 

 without meeting with a cordial response; being 

 indeed that characteristic of our race which made 

 the Reformation a necessity, and became the soul 

 of the Protestant movement. I mean the prin- 

 ciple which forbids the priest to come between a 

 man and his conscience. If it be true, as our 

 daily experience teaches us, that the moral sense 

 gains in clearness and power by exercise, by the 

 constant endeavor to find out and to see for our- 

 selves what is right and what is wrong, it must 

 be nothing short of a moral suicide to delegate 

 our conscience to another man. It is true that 

 when we are in difficulties, and do not altogether 

 see our way, we quite rightly seek counsel and 

 advice of some friend who has more experience, 

 more wisdom begot by it, more devotion to the 

 right, than ourselves, and who, not being involved 

 in the difficulties which encompass us, may more 

 easily see the way out of them. But such coun- 

 sel does not and ought not to take the place of 

 our private judgment; on the contrary, among 

 wise men it is asked and given for the purpose 

 of helping and supporting private judgment. I 

 should go to my friend, not that he may tell me 

 what to do, but that he may help me to see what 

 is right. 



Now, as we all know, there is a priesthood 

 whose influence is not to be made light of, even 

 in our own land, which claims to do two things : 

 to declare with infallible authoiity what is right 

 and what is wrong, and to take away the guilt 

 of the sinner after confession has been made to 

 it. The second of these claims we shall come 

 back upon in connection with another part of 

 the subject. But that claim is one which, as it 

 seems to me, ought to condemn the priesthood 

 making it in the eyes of every conscientious 



