To issue from some Egyptian temple and echo along
the shore of the Nile, right opposite to Pharaoh's palace and
Moses in the bulrushes, startling a multitude of storks and
alligators basking in the sun.
Everywhere "good men" sound a retreat, and the word has gone
forth to fall back on innocence. Fall forward rather on to
whatever there is there. Christianity only hopes. It has hung
its harp on the willows, and cannot sing a song in a strange
land. It has dreamed a sad dream, and does not yet welcome the
morning with joy. The mother tells her falsehoods to her child,
but, thank Heaven, the child does not grow up in its parent's
shadow. Our mother's faith has not grown with her experience.
Her experience has been too much for her. The lesson of life was
too hard for her to learn.
It is remarkable, that almost all speakers and writers feel it to
be incumbent on them, sooner or later, to prove or to acknowledge
the personality of God. Some Earl of Bridgewater, thinking it
better late than never, has provided for it in his will. It is a
sad mistake. In reading a work on agriculture, we have to skip
the author's moral reflections, and the words "Providence" and
"He" scattered along the page, to come at the profitable level of
what he has to say. What he calls his religion is for the most
part offensive to the nostrils. He should know better than
expose himself, and keep his foul sores covered till they are
quite healed. There is more religion in men's science than there
is science in their religion. Let us make haste to the report of
the committee on swine.
A man's real faith is never contained in his creed, nor is his
creed an article of his faith. The last is never adopted. This
it is that permits him to smile ever, and to live even as bravely
as he does. And yet he clings anxiously to his creed, as to a
straw, thinking that that does him good service because his sheet
anchor does not drag.
In most men's religion, the ligature, which should be its
umbilical cord connecting them with divinity, is rather like that
thread which the accomplices of Cylon held in their hands when
they went abroad from the temple of Minerva, the other end being
attached to the statue of the goddess. But frequently, as in
their case, the thread breaks, being stretched, and they are left
without an asylum.
"A good and pious man reclined his head on the bosom of
contemplation, and was absorbed in the ocean of a revery. At
the instant when he awaked from his vision, one of his friends,
by way of pleasantry, said, What rare gift have you brought us
from that garden, where you have been recreating?
