dogma"—it must be admitted that the religious have grounds to fear that implacable war is to be waged against them.
Those who stand on the heights of genuine faith cannot be disturbed by such misguided attacks. Being up in the mountain of vision with the Lawgiver, they take no note of those at the base, who make golden calves for gods. But we are not all as secure in our faith as the prophet, who, according to the legend, talked with God, while none of us are without some religiosity. Where faith is only an opinion, it is not unmixed with doubt; and where there is doubt there is also fear; and anger and fanaticism are only doubt and fear applied. As the poet tells us:
"There is no philosopher but sees
That rage and fear are one disease."
Our popular theologians, then, whose notion of faith is opinion, and their cherished doctrines only collections and conglomerations of opinions, may well be excused for the alarm they exhibit at the assumptions of the new lights who boast themselves the disciples of reason alone, and the possessors of a positive philosophy, definite, clear, and certain.
Now, who would imagine, after all this mustering of forces, that there is not a shadow of foundation for the conflict which is so fiercely waged?
If we liken the half-armed advocates of religion, in their heterogeneous harness, to the gallant knight of La Mancha running a tilt with the windmills, we are not the less reminded of him when we witness the triumph of the new philosophers at the overthrow of the "dogma of special creations." Here, indeed, we see exemplified, also, mutatis mutandis,[1] that other exploit when the famous representative of chivalry swooped down upon the frightened barber and captured his pewter basin for Mambrino's helmet. In attacking and carrying off this "dogma of special creations," they have made war upon a figment of their own brains, or, at most, upon the unphilosophical, and therefore unscientific and irreligious fictions of gentlemen of their own school. Where faith is wanting, superstition and credulity abound. Strange! strange! I repeat. There is no such doctrine as that of "special creations," such as they set out in their travesty under that head, contended for as a dogma by any school of religion, pagan, Jew, or Christian.
The anthropomorphic legends and poems of infant races, necessarily anthropomorphic because poetry, which is always simple, sensuous, passionate, are not formal enunciations of rational dogma. At most they contain only the philosophy of the religion (enveloped, and therefore concealed as well as revealed), under sensuous—that is, poetic—images.
- ↑ The necessary changes being made.
