IN LATER YEAES 1856-1905 573 



to such among us as Brooks, Gibbons, Hunger, Henry 

 Simmons, Rabbis Weinstock and Jacobs, and very many 

 others. It may be allowed to a hard-worked man who 

 has passed beyond the allotted threescore years and ten 

 to say that he has found in general religious biography, 

 Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant, and in the writings of 

 men nobly inspired in all these fields, a help without which 

 his life would have been poor indeed. 



True, there will be at times need of strong resistance, 

 and especially of resistance to all efforts by any clerical 

 combination, whether of rabbis, priests, or ministers, no 

 matter how excellent, to hamper scientific thought, to con 

 trol public education, or to erect barriers and arouse 

 hates between men. Both Eeligion and Science have suf 

 fered fearfully from unlimited clerical sway; but of the 

 two, Eeligion has suffered most. 



When one considers the outcome of national education 

 entirely under the control of the church during over fif 

 teen hundred years, in France at the outbreak of the 

 revolution of 1789, in Italy at the outbreak of the revo 

 lution of 1848, in the Spanish-American republics down 

 to a very recent period, and in Spain, Poland, and else 

 where at this very hour, one sees how delusive is the 

 hope that a return to the ideas and methods of the &quot;ages 

 of faith &quot; is likely to cure the evils that still linger 

 among us. 



The best way of aiding in a healthful evolution would 

 seem to consist in firmly but decisively resisting all eccle 

 siastical efforts to control or thwart the legitimate work 

 of science and education; in letting the light of modern 

 research and thought into the religious atmosphere ; and 

 in cultivating, each for himself, obedience to &quot;the first 

 and great commandment, and the second which is like 

 unto it,&quot; as given by the Blessed Founder of Christianity. 



