It should also be considered, that it is better not to interfere with the faith of the ignorant, but let them remain in an exoteric condition, until they are properly developed by sufficient education and consequent intelligence. It is just as much the duty of advanced thinkers not to tamper with the beliefs of men who are in an early stage of progress, as it is not to put a flaming torch in the possession of a lunatic, or a razor in the hands of a child.
Shelley, in his philosophy, accepted all this, with the full consciousness that in the end truth would prevail—he yearned for the time when priest-led slaves would
"Cease to proclaim that man
Inherits vice and misery, when force
And falsehood hang even o'er the cradled babe,
Stifling with rudest grasp all natural good,"
and for that epoch when "the Mohammedan, the Jew, the Christian, the Deist, and the Atheist will live together in one community, equally sharing the benefits which arise from its associations, and united in the bonds of charity and brotherly love."
With Shelley we can turn with delight to the gospels of the future, as of the ancient past; and the ramifications of the Trinity of a truly Rational Religion, Mature, Science, and Art, where we have, instead of idle prayers, addressed to gross material idols, or the impossible entities hitherto depicted in theological systems, a feeling of real satisfaction in learning how to live rather than to die, and in practicing virtue and benevolence for their own sakes, than for improbable rewards in the unsatisfactory hereafter, enunciated from the theological platform.
Like a true religionist, Shelley tells us that aspirations to "Madre Natura," like the following, should be poured out in silent, grateful communion with Omnipresence, and not in temples made by hands:
Spirit of Nature! here!
In this interminable wilderness
Of worlds, at whose immensity
Even soaring fancy staggers,
Here is thy fitting temple.
Yet not the slightest leaf
That quivers to the passing breeze
Is less instinct with thee;
Yet not the meanest worm
That lurks in graves, and fattens on the dead
Less shares thy eternal breath.
Spirit of Nature! thou!
Imperishable as this scene,
Here is thy fitting temple.
From such a soul-inspiring altar should praises like these be raised, and with what sacred feeling would the pure worshipper revel "where spirits live and dream—where all that is sweet in sound, or pure in vision floats on the air, or passes dimly before the sight," for as the late Professor J.G. Hoyt, in his essay on Shelley beautifully points out—"To him everything was God, and God was everything. Every place was peopled with forms of beauty and animated with living intelligences. Hills and valleys, forests and fountains, were each thronged with presiding deities—bright effluences from the Diving that stirred within, and shone above the whole."
In leaving the first portion of my paper, I will make the following quotation from a remarkable article on Shelley in the pages of the National Magazine, which all minds unshackled, and free from prejudice, must acknowledge to be correct in the main, and which admirably sums up his efforts in metaphysical philosophy. Our attention is called to the fact that we discover in all Shelley's writings "a freer and purer development of what is best and noblest in ourselves. We are taught in it to love all living and lifeless things, with which in the material and moral universe we are surrounded—we are taught to love the wisdom and goodness and majesty of the Almighty, for we are taught to love the universe, his symbol and visible exponent. God has given two books for the study and instruction of mankind; the book of revelation and the book of nature. In one at least of these was Shelley deeply versed, and in this one he has given admirable lessons to his fellow-men. Throughout his writings, every thought and every feeling is subdued and chastened by a spirit of unutterable and boundless love. The poet meets us on the common ground of a disinterested humanity, and he teaches us to hold an earnest faith in the worth and the intrinsic Godliness of the soul. He tells us—he makes us feel that there is nothing higher than human hope, nothing deeper than the human heart; he exhorts us to labor devotedly in the great and good work of the advancement of human virtue and happiness, and stimulates us
"To love and hear—to hope till hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates."