Not inaptly, we conceive, has religion been likened to a madman's robe,
for the least puff of reason parts it and shows the wearer's nakedness.
This view of religion explains the otherwise inexplicable fact that
eminent piety is usually associated with eminent imbecility. Such men as
Newton, Locke, and Bacon are not remembered and reverenced on account of
their faith. By all but peddling narrow-thoughted bigots they are held
in honour for their science, their matter-of-fact philosophy; not their
puerile conceits about 'airy nothings,' to which half crazed
supernaturalists have assigned 'a local habitation and a name.' Lord
Bacon laid down principles so remote from pious, that no man can
understand and philosophise in strict accordance with them, if he fears
to embrace Atheism. From his _Novum Organum Scientiarum_ may be
extracted an antidote to the poison of superstition, for it is there we
are told that _aiming at divine things through the human, breeds only an
odd mixture of imaginations_. There we are told that _Man, the servant
and interpreter of Nature, can only understand and act in proportion as
he observes or contemplates the order of nature--more he cannot do.
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