But the desire to enlighten others is lost in
regard for yourselves, and what Mrs. Grundy may say, is sufficient to
frighten ye from the enunciation truth.
Is superstition no evil? Is there nothing hateful, nothing against which
unceasing war should be waged, in the degradation of those unhappy
persons who worship idols of their own imagination? Can error be fraught
with good and truth with evil, that we should shrink from doing justice
to both? Everywhere are learnedly ignorant or basely cunning men, who
would scare us from dealing with religious error, as all error deserves
to be dealt with, by high-sounding jargon about the danger of freeing
vulgar minds from the wholesome restraints of certain antiquated
beliefs. Themselves essentially vulgar by habit and in feeling, their
estimate of human tendencies is of the meanest, the most grovelling
description. Measuring the _chaff_ of other men by their own bushel,
they arrive at the pious but false conclusion that without fear of God
there can be no genuine love of man, and that without faith in some one
of our five hundred and odd true religions, all the thoughts of our
hearts would be evil continually.
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