A HINT FEOM FRANKLIN 173 



generation, and Pranklin himself was perhaps as 

 little in the fog engendered by narrowness and dog- 

 matism as any man of his times. If there is one 

 thing certain in the history of mankind, it is that 

 sects do outgrow their creeds and are compelled 

 to pull down and build larger or else be terribly 

 pinched for room. Probably every one of the evan- 

 gelical churches is to-day more or less pinched by its 

 confessions of faith. No one can read the recent de- 

 bate of the Congregational ministers (1886) at Des 

 Moines, on the subject of Foreign Missions, Future 

 Probation, etc., without seeing how keenly the finer 

 and more expansive spirit among them felt the hard 

 limitations of their creed. The Andover professors 

 have tried to enlarge the creed a little, or rather, 

 they have tried to stretch it so as to make it less 

 galling to the modern humanitarian feeling, and for 

 this they are now arraigned, and by many of their 

 brethren already condemned. What . pagans and 

 heathens most of us still are in opinion, hardly yet 

 more than half liberated from the most groveling 

 and materialistic superstitions of the pre-Christian 

 world ! With our creedmakers, heaven is still a 

 place, hell is still an infernal abode, God is still 

 a Moloch or a Baal, Christ is still the victim sacri- 

 ficed upon the altar to conciliate an offended deity, 

 religion is still a doctrine and a ceremony, man is 

 still the sport of capricious and superhuman powers ; 

 justice is still reprisal and reversal ; and the day of 

 judgment is still an assizes adjourned to some future 

 time. Creeds in our day harden the heart; they 



