Superstition is universally abhorred, but no one believes himself
superstitious. There never was a religionist who believed his own
religion mere superstition. All shrink indignantly from the charge of
being superstitious; while all raise temples to, and bow down before,
'thingless names.' The 'masses' of every nation erect 'thingless names'
into substantial realities, and woe to those, who follow not the insane
example. The consequences--the fatal consequences--are everywhere
apparent. In our own country, one consequence is social disunion on the
grandest possible scale. Society is split up into an almost infinite
variety of sects, whose members imagine themselves patented to think
truth, and never to be wrong in the enunciation of it. This if no idle
or frivolous charge, as the Author of this Apology can easily show.
Before him is _Sanders' News Letter and Daily Advertiser_ of Feb. 18,
1845, which, among other curiosities, contains an 'Address of the Dublin
Protestant Operative Association, and Reformation Society,' one sentence
of which is--'We have raised our voices against the spirit of
compromise, which is the opprobrium of the age; we have unfurled the
banner of Protestant truth, and placed ourselves beneath it, we have
insisted upon Protestant ascendancy as just and equitable, because
Protestant principles are true and undeniable.
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