THE CHURCH. 541 



barbarous people witb tbe facts of science and the lofty 

 conceptions of philosophy ; a multitude of augurs who 

 sometimes smile when they meet, but who more often 

 feel inclined to sigh, for they are mostly serious and 

 worthy men. Entering the Church in their youth, 

 before their minds were formed, they discover too late 

 what it is that they adore, and since they cannot tell 

 the truth, and let their wives and children starve, they 

 are forced to lead a life which is a lie. What a state 

 of society is this in which free-thinker is a term of 

 abuse, and in which doubt is regarded as a sin. Men 

 have a Bluebeard's chamber in their minds which they 

 dare not open ; they have a faith which they dare not 

 examine lest they should be forced to cast it from them 

 in contempt. Worship is a conventionality, churches 

 are bonnet shows, places of assignation, shabby- 

 genteel salons where the parochial At Home is 

 given, and respectable tradesmen exhibit their daugh- 

 ters in the wooden stalls. O wondrous, awful, and 

 divine Religion ! You elevate our hearts from the 

 cares of common life, you transport us into the 

 unseen world, you bear us upwards to that sublime 

 temple of the skies where dwells the Veiled God, 

 whom mortal eye can never view, whom mortal mind 

 can never comprehend. How art thou fallen ! How 

 art thou degraded ! But it will be only for a time. 

 We are now in the dreary desert which separates two 

 ages of Belief. A new era is at hand. 



It is incorrect to say " theology is not a progres- 

 sive science." The worship of ancestral ghosts, the 

 worship of pagan deities, the worship of a single God, 

 are successive periods of progress in the science of 

 Divinity. And in the history of that science/ as in 



