THE RECONCILIATION. 



been repugnant, because it deprived him of an easy method 

 of gaining supernatural protection. To the Greeks it was 

 manifestly a source of comfort that on occasions of difficulty 

 they could obtain, through oracles, the advice of their gods, 

 nay, might even get the personal aid of their gods in bat- 

 tle; and it was probably a very genuine anger which they 

 visited upon philosophers who called in question these gross 

 ideas of their mythology. A religion which teaches the 

 Hindoo that it is impossible to purchase eternal happiness 

 by placing himself under the wheel of Juggernaut, can 

 scarcely fail to seem a cruel one to him; since it deprives 

 him of the pleasurable consciousness that he can at will ex- 

 change miseries for joys. Nor is it less clear that to our 

 Catholic ancestors, the beliefs that crimes could be com- 

 pounded for by the building of churches, that their own 

 punishments and those of their relatives could be abridged 

 by the saying of masses, and that divine aid or forgiveness 

 might be gained through the intercession of saints, were 

 highly solacing ones; and that Protestantism, in substitut- 

 ing the conception of a God so comparatively unlike our- 

 selves as not to be influenced by such methods, must have 

 appeared to them hard and cold. Naturally, therefore, we 

 must expect a further step in the same direction to meet with 

 a similar resistance from outraged sentiments. No 



mental revolution can be accomplished without more or less 

 of laceration. Be it a change of habit or a change of con- 

 viction, it must, if the habit of conviction be strong, do vio- 

 lence to some of the feelings ; and these must of course op- 

 pose it. For long-experienced, and therefore definite, 

 sources of satisfaction, have to be substituted sources of sat- 

 isfaction that have not been experienced, and are therefore 

 indefinite. That which is relatively well known and real, 

 has to be given up for that which is relatively unknown and 

 ideal. And of course such an exchange cannot be made 

 without a conflict involving pain. Especially then 



must there arise a strong antagonism to any alteration in so 



