repeat his biting sneer in more ages than one.[1] Was the argument of the Pagan philosopher unsatisfactory? It was never otherwise. Mr Strauss declares it has not yet been demonstrated; Mr Locke, that it cannot be proved. The spontaneous sentiment does its work with few words. Who shall demonstrate for us a fact of consciousness, or prove our personal identity? But the doctrine was connected with gross errors,—preëxistence and metempsychosis. Has the doctrine ever been free of such connection? in even a single historical case? It does not appear. The doctrine of inherited sin, of depravity born in the bones of men; the notion that the mass of men are doomed by the God of Mercy to eternal woe—immortal only to he wretched—is not a strange thing in the nineteenth century. Modern savages have foul notions of God; ancient civilization has sins enough on its head, hideous sins, unknown even in cur day, for the world has been worship,—but both are free from such a stain.[2]
CHAPTER VII.
THE INFLUENCE OF THE RELIGIOUS ELEMENT ON LIFE.
Man is not a being of isolated faculties which act independently. The religious, like each other element in us, acts jointly with other powers. Its action therefore is helped or hindered by them. The Idea of Religion is only realized by an harmonious action of all the faculties, the intellectual, the moral. Yet the religious faculty must act,
- ↑ Satir. II. 149, et seq.
- ↑ Leclerc, ubi sup., gives a bird's-eye view of the state of the world at the commencement of the Christian period, perhaps the most faithful that has been given of manners and opinions. The popular mythology was in about the same estimation among cultivated men as the popular theology at the present time with men of piety and good sense. Leroux de l'Humanité, Vol. I. p. 302, et seq., makes some observations on his doctrine among the ancients, not without interest. See a Sermon of Immortal Life, by Theo. Parker, Bost., 1846.
