Certainly its apostles preach it without misgiving, but it is not on
that account less possible that it may prove only to be the coming
superstition--like Christianity, true to its true votaries, and, like
Christianity, false to those who follow it introspectively.

It may well be we shall find we have escaped from one set of
taskmasters to fall into the hands of others far more ruthless. The
tyranny of the Church is light in comparison with that which future
generations may have to undergo at the hands of the doctrinaires.
The Church did uphold a grace of some sort as the summum bonum, in
comparison with which all so-called earthly knowledge--knowledge,
that is to say, which had not passed through so many people as to
have become living and incarnate--was unimportant. Do what we may,
we are still drawn to the unspoken teaching of her less introspective
ages with a force which no falsehood could command. Her buildings,
her music, her architecture, touch us as none other on the whole can
do; when she speaks there are many of us who think that she denies
the deeper truths of her own profounder mind, and unfortunately her
tendency is now towards more rather than less introspection. The
more she gives way to this--the more she becomes conscious of
knowing--the less she will know. But still her ideal is in grace.

The so-called man of science, on the other hand, seems now generally
inclined to make light of all knowledge, save of the pioneer
character. His ideal is in self-conscious knowledge. Let us have no
more Lo, here, with the professor; he very rarely knows what he says
he knows; no sooner has he misled the world for a sufficient time
with a great flourish of trumpets than he is toppled over by one more
plausible than himself. He is but medicine-man, augur, priest, in
its latest development; useful it may be, but requiring to be well