No doubt there is no such thing existent; but the
horror at evil which could find no other expression than in the
creation of a devil is no subject for laughter, and if it do not in
some shape or other survive, the race itself will not survive. No
religion, so far as I know, has dwelt like Christianity with such
profound earnestness on the bisection of man--on the distinction
within him, vital to the very last degree, between the higher and the
lower, heaven and hell. What utter folly is it because of an antique
vesture to condemn as effete what the vesture clothes! Its doctrine
and its sacred story are fixtures in concrete form of precious
thoughts purchased by blood and tears.
I fancy I see the sneer of theologians and critics at our efforts.
The theologians will mock us because we had nothing better to say. I
can only reply that we did our best. We said all we knew, and we
would most thankfully have said more, had we been sure that it must
be true. I would remind, too, those of our judges who think that we
were such wretched mortals, blind leaders of the blind, that there
have been long ages during which men never pretended to understand
more than we professed to understand. To say nothing of the Jews,
whose meagre system would certainly not have been thought either
satisfying or orthodox by modern Christians, the Greeks and Romans
lived in no clearer light than that which shines on me.
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