THE BELFAST ADDRESS 209 



for ages prior to all history, incorporated itself in the Ee- 

 ligions of the world. You, who have escaped from these 

 religions into the high- and- dry light of the intellect, may 

 deride them; but in so doing you deride accidents of form 

 merely, and fail to touch the immovable basis of the 

 religious sentiment in the nature of man. To yield this 

 sentiment reasonable satisfaction is the problem of prob- 

 lems at the present hour. And grotesque in relation to 

 scientific culture as many of the religions of the world 

 have been and are — dangerous, nay, destructive, to the 

 dearest privileges of freemen as some of them undoubtedly 

 have been, and would, if they could, be again — it will be 

 wise to recognize them as the forms of a force, mischievous 

 if permitted to intrude on the region of objective knowl- 

 edge, over which it holds no command, but capable of 

 adding, in the region of poetry and emotion, inward com- 

 pleteness and dignity to man. 



Feeling, I say again, dates from as old an origin and 

 as high a source as intelligence, and it equally demands 

 its range of play. The wise teacher of humanity will 

 recognize the necessity of meeting this demand, rather 

 than of resisting it on account of errors and absurdities 

 of form. What we should resist, at all hazards, is the 

 attempt made in the past, and now repeated, to found 

 upon this elemental bias of man's nature a system which 

 should exercise despotic sway over his intellect. I have 

 no fear of such a consummation. Science has already to 

 some extent leavened the world; it will leaven it more 

 and more. I should look upon the mild light of science 

 breaking in upon the minds of the youth of Ireland, and 

 strengthening gradually to the perfect day, as a surer 

 check to any intellectual or spiritual tyranny which may 



