MEDITATIONS AND CRITICISMS 189 



derives great advantages from the stock forms and 

 measures which he uses ; these are the garments of 

 mighty bards ; let him discard them, and his little- 

 ness and poverty will appear. So a man often hides 

 his mean and selfish nature in loud professions of 

 religion ; let him drop these and stand upon his own 

 merits, and we shall not be imposed upon. When 

 such an one fails we excuse the matter by saying, 

 " Well, it was not the fault of the religion, but of 

 the man." The fault is in attaching any religious 

 value to forms and beliefs — in having any cloaks 

 of this kind in which a scoundrel may masquer- 

 ade. 



If a man professes to be a legal or medical or sci- 

 entific expert, and is not, he is soon found out. This 

 is not a cloak, but a sword, and if he cannot wield 

 it, he is soon exposed. But a man may profess 

 Christianity to-day and rob a bank to-morrow. 



Probably no honest mind ever gave its assent to 

 the literal truth of the Thirty-Nine Articles, or to 

 any of the various creeds, until its sympathy and its 

 interest had been brought over by an appeal to the 

 emotions. The creed is an after-thought ; it is the 

 terms which the conscience makes with the reason 

 after the reason has surrendered. In assenting to 

 it the convert thinks he is only assenting to the 

 truth of his religion, or to the genuineness of the 

 emotion he has experienced. Mayhap by and by, 

 when he discovers that he has assented to a set of 

 propositions which, standing naked and formal as 

 they do, are divested of the spiritual warmth and 



