THE CONTROVERSIALIST 215 



manity against creeds between which and the facts of 

 life and nature there is no correspondence, since they 

 remain puzzles to the head and strangers to the heart. 

 As Emerson says, " The prayers and dogmas of our 

 Church are like the zodiac of Denderah and the as- 

 tronomical monuments of the Hindoos, wholly in- 

 sulated from anything now extant in the life and the 

 business of the people." 1 



In place of the " tangled Trinities," the logoma- 

 chies which only bewilder and perplex, Huxley asked 

 the Churches to revive " a conception of religion 

 which," he says, " appears to me as wonderful an in- 

 spiration of genius as the art of Pheidias or the 

 science of Aristotle. ' And what doth the Lord re- 

 quire of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, 

 and to walk humbly with thy God ? ' If any so- 

 called religion takes away from this great saying of 

 Micah, I think it wantonly mutilates, while, if it 

 adds thereto, I think it obscures the perfect ideal of 

 religion." 2 



All that is best in the ethics of the modern world, 

 in so far as it has not grown out of Greek thought, or 

 Barbarian manhood, is the direct development of the 

 ethics of old Israel. There is no code of legislation, 

 ancient or modern, at once so just and so merciful, so 

 tender to the weak and poor, as the Jewish law ; and 

 if the Gospels are to be trusted, Jesus of Nazareth 



l "The American Scholar." 2 Coll. Essays, iv, p. 161. 



