B.—REWARDS OF CONFORMITY.
The power of filial love hardly exceeds that of the passionate veneration which kindles about the person of a sincere teacher of truth. The homage paid to an apostle of light is the noblest form of hero-worship. The hosannas of idol-service overflowing upon the idol-priest are marred by the discords of hypocrisy and the reproving silence of reason; but the approval of wisdom is the highest reward of its ministry. The brightness of that prestige shames the gilded halo of the mythology-monger; the minister of Truth may lack the pomp of consecrated temples, but his disciples will make a hermit’s cave a Delphic grotto and will not willingly let the record of his oracles perish. The chants of the Eleusynian festivals, the shout of the Lupercalia, the mumblings of augurs and sibyls, have been forever silenced; but the words of Plato still live; Socrates still speaks to [[234]]thousands of truth-seekers; the wisdom of Seneca still brightens the gloom of adversity.
Religions founded on any basis of truth can survive the fall of their temples. Jerusalem was wrecked in the storm of Roman conquest, but the health-laws of the Mosaic code defied the power of the destroyer, and of all the creeds born on the teeming soil of the East, Judaism alone can still be preached without an alloy of cant and compromise.
The enthusiasm of progress has nothing to fear from the growth of skepticism. Mankind will always appreciate their enlightened well-wishers. In cities where the creed of the Galilean supernaturalist has become almost as obsolete as the witchcraft delusion, progressive clergymen still draw audiences of intelligent and sincere admirers, and the apostles of social reform are haunted by anxious inquirers, disciples whom the penalties of heresy fail to deter, and who if barred out all day will come by night: “Master, what shall we do to be saved?”
In spite of sham saviors, the search after salvation has never ceased, and after eighteen centuries of clerical caricatures the ideal of true priesthood still survives in the hearts of men.