But the men are
following their reason, and the women their emotion. It
is the women only who keep orthodoxy alive.
No, you mustn't be too sure of that majority of
yours. Taking the scientific, the medical, the
professional classes, I question whether it exists at
all. The clergy, busy in their own limited circles, and
coming in contact only with those who agree with them,
have not realised how largely the rising generation has
outgrown them. And (with exceptions like yourself) it is
not the most lax, but the BEST of the younger men,
the larger-brained and the larger-hearted, who have
shaken themselves most clear of the old theology. They
cannot abide its want of charity, it's limitations
of God's favours, its claims for a special Providence,
its dogmatism about what seems to be false, its conflict
with what we know to be true. We KNOW that man has
ascended, not descended; so what is the value of a scheme
of thought which depends upon the supposition of his
fall? We KNOW that the world was not made in six
days, that the sun could never be stopped since it was
never moving, and that no man ever lived three days in a
fish; so what becomes of the inspiration of a book which
contains such statements? "Truth, though it crush me!"
There, now, you see what comes of waving the red rag!
Let me make a concession to appease you. I do believe
that Christianity in its different forms has been the
very best thing for the world during all this long
barbarous epoch.
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