DEMOCRACY. SKEPTICISM. 31 



the promulgation of sound republican views, it strongly op 

 poses the fear that many have, of providing for the lower 

 classes an education that shall make them capable of free 

 independent thinking. It is long ago too late in any coun 

 try in the world, to prevent the masses from learning that 

 little that is dangerous. Yet, even in England, it is argued 

 by churchmen that education, unless managed by the church, 

 is the foe of their religion ! Surely, there must be conscious 

 ness of evil in this fear of the light. True religion is not a 

 machinery for fitting men with beliefs and morals. The free 

 man in Christ cannot be the subject of ignorance. It is as 

 much slavish and disloyal to God to be blindly led by a 

 priest, as to be wheedled by a politician ; and more than it 

 is to be ruled over and crushed by a tyrant. Let us remem 

 ber, too, that slaves to party or to creed are not confined to 

 monarchies, but that all churches and governments whose 

 authority is not dependent on the untrammelled and honest 

 judgment of free intelligent minds, are alike ungodly and 

 degrading. 



If this view of the connection of liberal politics with reli 

 gious skepticism is correct, it follows that we may look with 

 less of horror and more of hope upon the infidelity which has 

 so scandalized the national character of France. We may 

 conceive it as the unnatural and convulsive action of a mind 

 which the last thrust of tyranny has suddenly aroused from a 

 long, false dream. Sitting in judgment over the wickedness 

 of tyrants and the licentiousness of courts, it would be 

 strange, unnatural, almost unreasonable, that a people whose 

 religious teachers had been dependent on those tyrants, had 

 been the most active sycophants of those courts, teachers, 

 who had taught them that the power there seated was sacred, 

 should hold in reverence for a moment longer, any of the 

 dogmas of a religion so debased. The authority, the stability 



