compassion for all weakness and imperfection. One can hardly love
Rousseau, though one does not wonder that there were many found to
do so; and instead of judging him, one cries out with horror at the
slime of the pit where he lay bound.



April 14, 1889.


A delusion of which we must beware is the delusion that we can have
a precise and accurate knowledge of spiritual things. This is a
delusion into which the exponents of settled religions are apt to
fall. The Roman Catholic, with his belief in the infallible Church,
as the interpreter of God's spirit, which is nothing more than a
belief in the inspiration of the majority, or even a belief in the
inspiration of a bureaucracy, is the prey of this delusion. The
Protestant, too, with his legal creed, built up of texts and
precedents, in which the argumentative dicta of Apostles and
Evangelists are as weighty and important as the words of the
Saviour Himself, falls under this delusion. I read the other day a
passage from a printed sermon of an orthodox type, an acrid outcry
against Liberalism in religion, which may illustrate what I mean.

"To St. Paul and St. John," said the preacher, "the natural or
carnal man is hopelessly remote from God; the same Lord who came to
make possible for man this intimate communion with God is careful
to make it clear that this communion is only possible to redeemed,
regenerate man; prior to new birth into the Kingdom of God, far
from being a son of God, man is, according to the Lord Himself, a