ared to that of St. Francois Xavier in Hindostan.]

In popularizing terms wrongly, lies much mischief. If the misapplied
term Christianity, signify the current notion, zeal for truth, the
good of mankind, and active virtue or Christism, the reputed precepts
of Christ, then Shelley taught that ethical system, and the so-called
Christian world which persecuted him, the opposite.

No one believed, better than Shelley, in the necessity of continuity,
and that all theological systems are a portion of the development of
Humanity.

It should likewise be remembered, that even in the grossest
superstition, as in the highest belief, the underlying aspiration,
veiled perhaps, under some beautiful myth, is a straining after the
pure and the good, and, as Shelley puts it:

"All original religions are allegorical, or susceptible of
allegory, and, like Janus, have a double face of false and
true."

It should also be considered, that it is better not to interfere with
the faith of the ignorant, but let them remain in an exoteric
condition, until they are properly developed by sufficient education
and consequent intelligence. It is just as much the duty of advanced
thinkers not to tamper with the beliefs of men who are in an early
stage of progress, as it is not to put a flaming torch in the
possession of a lunatic, or a razor in the hands of a child.

Shelley, in his philosophy, accepted all this, with the full
consciousness that in the end truth would prevail--he yearned for the
time when priest-led slaves would

"Cease to proclaim that man
Inherits vice and misery, when force
And falsehood hang even o'er the cradled babe,
Stifling with rudest grasp all natural good,"

and for that epoch when "the Mohammedan, the Jew, the Christian, the
Deist, and the Atheist will live together in one community, equally
sharing the benefits which arise from its associations, and united in
the bonds of charity and brotherly love."

With Shelley we can turn with delight to the gospels of the future, as
of the ancient past; and the ramifications of the Trinity of a truly
Rational Religion, Mature, Science, and Art, where we have, instead of
idle prayers, addressed to gross material idols, or the impossible
entities hitherto depicted in theological systems, a feeling of real
satisfaction in learning how to live rather than to die, and in
practicing virtue and benevolence for their own sakes, than