Pleasant as the
process might be of announcing the truth and leaving the falsehood to
decay of itself, it cannot be carried into practice. Men's minds must be
called back from the present of phantoms and encouraged to follow the
only path which tends to enduring results. We cannot afford to make the
tacit concession that our opinions, though true, are depressing and
debasing. No; they are encouraging and elevating. If the medicine is
bitter to the taste, it is good for the digestion. Here and there, a
bold avowal of the truth will disperse a pleasing dream, as here and
there it will relieve us of an oppressing nightmare. But it is not by
striking balances between these pains and pleasures that the total
effect of the creed is to be measured; but by the permanent influence on
the mind of seeing things in their true light and dispersing the old
halo of erroneous imagination. To inculcate reticence at the present
moment is simply to advise us to give one more chance to the development
of some new form of superstition. If the faith of the future is to be a
faith which can satisfy the most cultivated as well as the feeblest
intellects, it must be founded on an unflinching respect for realities.
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