Nay, we shall never be duly sensitive
to the miseries and cruelties which make the world a place of torture
for so many, so long as men are encouraged in the name of religion to
look for a remedy, not in fighting against surrounding evils, but in
cultivating aimless contemplations of an imaginary ideal. Much of our
popular religion seems to be expressly directed to deaden our sympathies
with our fellow-men by encouraging an indolent optimism; our thoughts of
the other world are used in many forms as an opiate to drug our minds
with indifference to the evils of this; and the last word of half our
preachers is, dream rather than work.
To the other question, Why deprive men of their religious consolations?
I must make a rather longer reply. In the first place, I must observe
that the burden of proof does not rest with me. If any one should tell
me explicitly, a certain dogma is false, but it is better not to destroy
it, I would not reply summarily that he is preaching grossly immoral
doctrine; but I would only refrain from the reply because I should think
that he does not quite mean what he says.
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