nothing may be added, and from which nothing may be taken away; the
suggestion of a new idea is resented as an encroachment, punished as an
insidious piece of treason, and resisted by the combined forces of all
common practical understandings, which know too well the value of what
they have, to risk the venture upon untried change. Periods of religious
transition, therefore, when the advance has been a real one, always have
been violent, and probably will always continue to be so. They to whom
the precious gift of fresh light has been given are called upon to
exhibit their credentials as teachers in suffering for it. They, and
those who oppose them, have alike a sacred cause; and the fearful
spectacle arises of earnest, vehement men contending against each other
as for their own souls, in fiery struggle. Persecutions come, and
martyrdoms, and religions wars; and, at last, the old faith, like the
phoenix, expires upon its altar, and the new rises out of the ashes.

Such, in briefest outline, has been the history of religions, natural
and moral; the first, indeed, being in no proper sense a religion at
all, as we understand religion; and only assuming the character of it in
the minds of great men whose moral sense had raised them beyond their
time and country, and who, feeling the necessity of a real creed, with
an effort and with indifferent success, endeavoured to express, under
the systems which they found, emotions which had no proper place in
them.

Of the transition periods which we have described as taking place under
the religion which we call moral, the first known to us is marked at its
opening by the appearance of the Book of Job, the first fierce collision
of the new fact with the formula which will not stretch to cover it.

The earliest phenomenon likely to be observed connected with the moral
government of the world is the general one, that on the whole, as things
are constituted, good men prosper and are happy, bad men fail and are
miserable. The cause of such a condition is no mystery, and lies very
near the surface. As soon as men combine in society, they are forced to
obey certain laws under which alone society is possible, and these laws,
even in their rudest form, approach the laws of conscience. To a certain
extent, every one is obliged to sacrifice his private inclinations; and
those who refuse to do so are punished, or are crushed. If society were
perfect, the imperfect tendency would carry itself