in the memory
of history. But persecution operates incessantly like a natural force.
With the universality of light, it radiates in every direction. The
palace is not too proud for its entrance, nor is the cottage too humble.
It affects every relationship of life. Its action is exhibited in public
through imprisonment, torture, and bloodshed, and in private through the
tears of misery and the groans of despair.

But worse remains. Bodies starve and hearts break, but at last there
comes "the poppied sleep, the end of all." Grief is buried in the grave,
Nature covers it with a mantle of grass and flowers, and the feet of joy
trip merrily over the paths once trodden by heavy-footed care. Yet the
more subtle effects of persecution remain with the living. _They_ are
not screwed down in the coffin and buried with the dead. They become
part of the pestilential atmosphere of cowardice and hypocrisy which
saps the intellectual manhood of society, so that bright-eyed inquiry
sinks into blear-eyed faith, and the rich vitality of active honest
thought falls into the decrepitude of timid and slothful acquiescence.

What is this principle of persecution, and how is it generated and
developed in the human mind? Now that it is falling into discredit,
there is a tendency on the part of Christian apologists to ascribe it
to our natural hatred of contradiction. Men argue and quarrel, and if
intellectual differences excite hostility in an age like this, how easy
it was for them to excite the bitterest animosity in more ignorant and
barbarous ages! Such is the plea now frequently advanced. No doubt it
wears a certain plausibility, but a little investigation will show
its fallacy. Men and women are so various in their minds, characters,
circumstances, and interests, that if left to themselves they inevitably
form a multiplicity of ever-shifting parties, sects, fashions and
opinions; and while each might resent the impertinence of disagreement
from its own standard, the very multiformity of the whole mass must
preserve a general balance of fair play, since every single sect with an
itch for persecuting would be confronted by an overwhelming majority
of dissidents. It is obvious, therefore, that persecution can only be
indulged in when some particular form of opinion is in the ascendant:
and if this form is artificially developed; if it is the result, not of
knowledge and reflection, but of custom and training; if, in short, it
is rather a s