572 RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT -IV 



which enthroned Calvinism in large parts of the British 

 Empire and elsewhere brought new forms of unreason, 

 oppression, and unhappiness ; the revolution in France 

 substituted for the crudities and absurdities of the old 

 religion a &quot;purified worship of the Supreme Being&quot; 

 under which came human sacrifices by thousands, fol 

 lowed by a reaction to an unreason more extreme than 

 anything previously known. Goldwin Smith was right 

 when he said, &quot;Let us never glorify revolution.&quot; 



Christianity, though far short of what it ought to be 

 and will be, is to-day purer and better, in all its branches, 

 than it has ever before been ; and the same may be said 

 of Judaism. Any man born into either of these forms of 

 religion should, it seems to me, before breaking away 

 from it, try as long as possible to promote its better evo 

 lution ; aiding to increase breadth of view, toleration, in 

 difference to unessentials, cooperation with good men and 

 true of every faith. Melanchthon, St. Francis Xavier, 

 Grotius, Thomasius, George Fox, Fenelon, the Wesleys, 

 Moses Mendelssohn, Schleiermacher, Dr. Arnold, Chan- 

 ning, Phillips Brooks, and their like may well be our ex 

 emplars, despite all their limitations and imperfections. 



I grant that there are circumstances which may oblige 

 a self-respecting man to withdraw from religious organi 

 zations and assemblages. There may be reactionary 

 zeal of rabbis, priests, deacons, destructive to all health 

 ful advance of thought; there may be a degeneration of 

 worship into fetishism; there may be control by young 

 Levites whose minds are only adequate to decide the colors 

 of altar-cloths and the cut of man-millinery; there may 

 be control by men of middle age who preach a gospel of 

 &quot;hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness &quot; ; there may be 

 tyranny by old men who will allow no statements of belief 

 save those which they learned as children. 



From such evils, there are, in America at least, many 

 places of refuge; and, in case these fail, there are the 

 treasures of religious thought accumulated from the days 

 of Marcus Aurelius, St. Augustine, and Thomas a Kempis 



