It is
science, not theology, which has changed all this; it is the atheists,
infidels, and rationalists, as they are kindly called, who have taught
us to take fresh interest in our poor fellow denizens of the world, and
not to despise them because Almighty benevolence could not be expected
to admit them to heaven; to the same teaching we owe the recognition of
the noble aspirations embodied in every form of religion, and the
destruction of the ancient monopoly of Divine influences; and it is
science again that has taught us to accommodate ourselves to the laws in
which we are placed, instead of fruitlessly struggling against them and
invoking miraculous interference to conquer them. The theology of which
I am now speaking differs, indeed, radically from the old, so radically
that one is at times surprised that the agreement, to use a common word,
should reconcile vital differences in faith. But it often tends to the
same end by a different path. It attempts to deny the existence of
evils, instead of proclaiming their ultimate destruction. Every thing
comes from a paternal hand; why struggle against it? Disease and
starvation and nakedness are, somehow or other, parts of a divine system
which is somehow or other deserving of our sincerest adoration.
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