are capable of far
simpler statements; infinite error and distortion disappear, and the
road is open for conceptions impossible under the old circuitous and
erroneous methods.

We have arrived at the point from which we can detect the source of
ancient errors, and extract the gold from the dross. One thing, indeed,
remains for the present impossible. The old creed, elaborated by many
generations, and consecrated to our imaginations by a vast wealth of
associations, is adapted in a thousand ways to the wants of its
believers. The new creed--whatever may be its ultimate form--has not
been thus formulated and hallowed to our minds. We, whose fetters are
just broken, cannot tell what the world will look like to men brought up
in the full blaze of day, and accustomed from infancy to the free use of
their limbs. For centuries all ennobling passions have been
industriously associated with the hope of personal immortality, and base
passions with its rejection. We cannot fully realize the state of men
brought up to look for a reward of heroic sacrifice in the consciousness
of good work achieved in this world instead of in the hope of posthumous
repayment. Nor again, have we, if we shall ever have, any system capable
of replacing the old forms of worship by which the imagination was
stimulated and disciplined. That such reflections should make many men
pause before they reveal the open secret is intelligible enough. But
what is the true moral to be derived from them? Surely that we should
take courage and speak the truth. We should take courage, for even now
the new faith offers to us a more cheering and elevating prospect than
the old. When it shall have become familiar to men's minds, have worked
itself into the substance of our convictions, and provided new channels
for the utterance of our emotions, we may anticipate incomparably higher
results. We are only laying the foundations of the temple, and know not
what will be the glories of the completed edifice. Yet already the
prospect is beginning to clear. The sophistries which entangle us are
transparent. That faith is not the noblest which enables us to believe
the greatest number of articles on the least evidence; nor is that
doctrine really the most productive of happiness which encourages us to
cherish the greatest number of groundless hopes. The system which is
really most calculated to make men happy is that which forces them to
live in a bracing atmosphere; which fits