new-coined spirit throw another
light upon the universe and contain another commentary on the printed
Bibles; every scruple, every true dissent, every glimpse of something
new, is a letter of God's alphabet; and though there is a grave
responsibility for all who speak, is there none for those who
unrighteously keep silence and conform? Is not that also to conceal and
cloak God's counsel? And how should we regard the man of science who
suppressed all facts that would not tally with the orthodoxy of the
hour?

Wrong? You are as surely wrong as the sun rose this morning round the
revolving shoulder of the world. Not truth, but truthfulness, is the
good of your endeavour. For when will men receive that first part and
prerequisite of truth, that, by the order of things, by the greatness of
the universe, by the darkness and partiality of man's experience, by the
inviolate secrecy of God, kept close in His most open revelations, every
man is, and to the end of the ages must be, wrong? Wrong to the
universe; wrong to mankind; wrong to God. And yet in another sense, and
that plainer and nearer, every man of men, who wishes truly, must be
right. He is right to himself, and in the measure of his sagacity and
candour. That let him do in all sincerity and zeal, not sparing a
thought for contrary opinions; that, for what it is worth, let him
proclaim. Be not afraid; although he be wrong, so also is the dead,
stuffed Dagon he insults. For the voice of God, whatever it is, is not
that stammering, inept tradition which the people holds. These truths
survive in travesty, swamped in a world of spiritual darkness and
confusion; and what a few comprehend and faithfully hold, the many, in
their dead jargon, repeat, degrade, and misinterpret.

So far of Respectability: what the Covenanters used to call "rank
conformity": the deadliest gag and wet blanket that can be laid on men.
And now of Profit. And this doctrine is perhaps the more redoubtable,
because it harms all sorts of men; not only the heroic and self-reliant,
but the obedient, cowlike squadrons. A man, by this doctrine, looks to
consequences at the second, or third, or fiftieth turn. He chooses his
end, and for that, with wily turns and through a great sea of tedium,
steers this mortal bark. There may be political wisdom in such a view;
but I am persuaded there can spring no great moral zeal. To look thus
obliquely upon life is the very recipe for moral slumber. Our intention
and