Page:Genesis I-II- (IA genesisiii00grot).pdf/21

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INTRODUCTION.
11

preachers unfit for the ministry, and it makes the people indifferent to the real message the Church has to carry. For the last quarter of a century all religious progress in America has come from a movement in Europe. Educated Episcopalians are looking for the opinions of Dean Stanley, Canon Farrar and Canon Curteis. Those of the American Episcopal Bishops who are active in a literary way seem to belong to a past generation. They are resisting necessary changes and seem endeavoring to oppose in a futile manner the advance of light and knowledge. But the moment one touches the infallibility of religion, even remotely, that instant one is extended upon the cross of misrepresentation. One can do much in other directions and escape calumny, but speak against animistic doctrines, even if you leave animism untouthced, and you fall by the swords of your friends. Every inducement is held out to you to join at least in appearance the opposite ranks, and if you do not, you must be wary, indeed, not to be fatally set upon. The spectacle is over again presented, through Roman, Grecian, Alexandrian, mediæval and present time, of Science proving her case and then declaring, through the mouth of her advocate, that other evidence, never presented, still exists which throws her out of Court. All this to escape personal blame and censure and to appease the many votaries of the Supernatural. So it comes to pass that our sympathies are withdrawn from the people who surround us and the age in which we live, and are thrown out into the future, to the coming Man who will, we hope, be wiser and happier than we can ever be, and for whom we sacrifice ourselves and taste the pleasures of self-sacrifice. This seems to be the Origin of the Religion of Humanity, born because of the harshness and unreason surrounding us.

One stands perforce outside of the hopes and joys of the world when one refuses to go with it in this matter of dogmatic belief. The barren pity in one's heart is refused all sympathy and ebbs and flows unnoticed by those for whom it is excited. So at last the mind becomes filled with visions of the sweeter time when