We still retain
the faiths at which theologians arrived by a complex machinery of
arbitrary contrivances destined to compensate one set of dogmas by
another. The justice of God the Father is tempered by the mercy of God
the Son, as the planet wheeled too far forward by the cycle is brought
back to its place by the epicycle. When we strike out the elaborate
arrangements, the truths which they aim at expressing are capable of far
simpler statements; infinite error and distortion disappear, and the
road is open for conceptions impossible under the old circuitous and
erroneous methods.
We have arrived at the point from which we can detect the source of
ancient errors, and extract the gold from the dross. One thing, indeed,
remains for the present impossible. The old creed, elaborated by many
generations, and consecrated to our imaginations by a vast wealth of
associations, is adapted in a thousand ways to the wants of its
believers. The new creed--whatever may be its ultimate form--has not
been thus formulated and hallowed to our minds. We, whose fetters are
just broken, cannot tell what the world will look like to men brought up
in the full blaze of day, and accustomed from infancy to the free use of
their limbs.
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