THE LAST SACRIFICE. 543 



the Syrian superstition must be attacked, but also the 

 belief in a personal God, which engenders a slavish 

 and oriental condition of the mind ; and the belief in a 

 posthumous reward which engenders a selfish and 

 solitary condition of the heart. These beliefs are, 

 therefore, injurious to human nature. They lower its 

 dignity ; they arrest its development ; they isolate its 

 affections. We shall not deny that many beautiful 

 sentiments are often mingled with the faith in a 

 personal Deity, and with the hopes of happiness in a 

 future state ; yet we maintain that, however refined 

 they may appear, they are selfish at the core, and that 

 if removed they will be replaced by sentiments of a 

 nobler and a purer kind. They cannot be removed 

 without some disturbance and distress ; yet the sor- 

 rows thus caused are salutary and sublime. The 

 supreme and mysterious Power by whom the uni- 

 verse has been created, and by whom it has been 

 appointed to run its course under fixed and invari- 

 able law; that awful One to whom it is profanity to 

 pray, of whom it is idle and irreverent to argue and 

 debate, of whom we should never presume to think 

 save with humility and awe; that Unknown God has 

 ordained that mankind should be elevated by mis- 

 fortune, and that happiness should grow out of misery 

 and pain. I give to universal history a strange but 

 true title — The Martyrdom of Man. In each gene- 

 ration the human race has been tortured that their 

 children might profit by their woes. Our own pros- 

 perity is founded on the agonies of the past. Is it 

 therefore unjust that we also should suffer for the 

 benefit of those who are to come? Famine, pestilence, 

 and war are no longer essential for the advancement of 



