_
There too is set down the wise lesson that truth is justly to be called
the daughter, not of Authority, but Time. Bacon abhorred superstition.
He denounced it as the 'confusion of many states,' and for a 'religious
philosopher' wrote most liberally of Atheism. No one who has read his
Essay on Superstition can doubt that he thought it a far greater evil
than Atheism. Any man who should now write as favourably of Godlessness
would be suspected of a latitudinarianism quite inimical to the genius
and spirit of 'true religion.' The orthodox much prefer false piety to
no piety at all. Mere honesty does not satisfy them. They insist on
faith in their chimerical doctrines and systems, as 'the basis of all
excellence.' To please them we must sacrifice truth as it is in Nature,
at the shrine of truth as it is in Jesus, and believe what derives no
sanction from experience. Bacon taught us to 'interpret nature,' and
that 'aiming at the divine through the human breeds only an odd mixture
of imaginations;' but these hair-brained fanatics who would have us
believe him _one of them_, care little for natural knowledge, and affect
contempt for all that concerns most intimately our 'earthly
tabernacles.
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