542 THE NEW REFORMATION. 



the history of all others, a curious fact may he ob- 

 served. Those who overthrow an established system 

 are compelled to attack its founders, and to show that 

 their method was unsound, that their reasoning was 

 fallacious, that their experiments were incomplete. 

 And yet the men who create the revolution are made 

 in the likeness of the men whose doctrines they sub- 

 vert. The system of Ptolemy was supplanted by the 

 system of Copernicus, yet Copernicus was the Ptolemy 

 of the sixteenth century. In the same manner, we 

 who assail the Christian faith are the true successors of 

 the early Christians, above whom we are raised by 

 the progress of eighteen hundred years. As they 

 preached against gods that were made of stone, so we 

 preach against gods that are made of ideas. As they 

 were called atheists and blasphemers so are we. And 

 is our task more difficult than theirs ? We have not, 

 it is true, the same stimulants to offer. We cannot 

 threaten that the world is about to be destroyed ; we 

 cannot bribe our converts with a heaven, we cannot 

 make them tremble with a hell. But though our 

 religion appears too pure, too unselfish for man- 

 kind, it is not really so, for we live in a noble and 

 enlightened age. At the time of the Romans and the 

 Greeks the Christian faith was the highest to which 

 the common people could attain. A faith such as that 

 of the Stoics and the Sadducees could only be em- 

 braced by cultivated minds, and culture was then con- 

 fined to a chosen few. But now knowledge, freedom, 

 and prosperity are covering the earth ; for three cen- 

 turies past human virtue has been steadily increasing, 

 and mankind is prepared to receive a higher faith. 

 But in order to build we mnst first destroy. Not only 



