Error and insufficiency must, from the nature of the materials dealt with, after a time be found in every theology. In this sense every Church has erred, and could not but have erred. The mischief, however, is not in this error and insufficiency, for they are remediable. The progress of knowledge which points out the error, often indeed creating it by the introduction of additional data, supplies the means for correcting it; and the advance in the conditions of society, which creates the insufficiency, suggests the means for correcting it, too. Nor, again, is the mischief in the ignorance of the majority, for that can to the extent required be removed. It is in the determination of some, from whom better things might have been expected, not to examine all things with the intention of holding fast that which is true; but to close their eyes and ears, as theologians, against all that the educated world now knows, and all that the uneducated masses are repelled by in what is now presented to them as the Word of God. This determination puts them in the position of being obliged to support, and encourage, only those who address themselves to the ignorance of the age, but not for the purpose of removing it; and to oppose, and discourage, those who address themselves to the knowledge of the age, for the purpose of making it religious. We need not repeat what we have been told will happen, when the blind lead the blind.

The recollection of what has given to our political constitution its orderly and peaceful development might be of use here. It goes on accommodating itself smoothly, and without convulsions, to the altering conditions of society, because political parties amongst us are not coincident with classes. Members of the popular party are to be found in the highest classes as well as in the lowest, and of the stationary party in the lowest as well as in the highest. This is what has here exorcized the demon of revolution. If party lines had been drawn horizontally instead of vertically, class would have been arrayed against class; and, probably, ignorance and violence, supported by numbers, would have made a clean sweep of our institutions, and, to no small extent, of our civilization. What has been advantageous in the political order would be equally so in the religious. What has saved us from a political, might, if adopted, save us from a possible religious, crash. It is a miserably short-sighted policy to endeavour to drive from the camp of religion, or of the National Church, those who have accepted the knowledge of our times, and who have sympathies with the existing tendencies or possibilities of society: so that on one side shall be arrayed only those, who rest on what is old, and on the other only those, who have no disposition to reject what is new. Whereas the true bridge from the present to the future can be constructed by neither of these parties alone; but must be the work of those, whose wish and effort are to combine, and to harmonise, the new with the old. This appreciation of what is needed, is, at all events, in accordance with the meaning of the saying, to the authority of which we must all defer, that ‘every scribe, who is instructed unto the Kingdom of Heaven, will bring forth out of his treasures things new as well as old.’ The course taken by those, who lose sight of the guidance offered them in this saying, can only bring them into a false position.

It is very instructive to observe how circumstances analogous to those, which existed among the chosen people, at the date of the promulgation of Christianity, are, at this moment, amongst ourselves producing analogous effects. We have lately heard those, who are attempting to make the knowledge, men have now been permitted to attain to, an element of religion, which is what knowledge must always become in the end, described as ‘maudlin sentimentalists.’ Precisely the same expression, motivated by precisely the same feelings, and ideas, might have been applied with the same propriety, or impropriety, and with the same certainty of disastrous recoil on those who used it, to the teaching of the Divine Master Himself. He appealed from the hard, narrow, rigid forms, in which the old Law had been fossilized, to the sense men had come to have of what was moral, and needed, and to the knowledge they had come to have of what was true, under the then advanced conditions of society and of knowledge. The maintainers of the fossilized Law were for binding heart and mind fast in the fetters of dogmatic human traditions. He was for setting mind and heart free by the reception of what was broad and true; at once human and divine. That alone was desirable, beneficent, and from God. It blessed, strengthened, emancipated, and gave peace. No authority, however venerable, could be pleaded against it. No thrones, principalities, or powers, however exalted, would be able to withstand it. There was no fear or possibility of its being refuted: for it was nothing but the perception, and the practical recognition, of existing knowledge, and of existing conditions. Men, they might be many, might reject it, but to their own detriment only. The facts would remain. The rest, all whose eyes were open, or could be opened, to perceive what was before their eyes, would receive it as from God. The more it was set in the broad light of day the better. It must be proclaimed in the highways, and the market-places, and in the Temple itself. If those who had received it were to hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out. It was God’s Truth. It was God’s Word: not because it was written, for as yet it was not written, but because, as the Word of God ever had, and ever would, come, it came from the pure heart, and the enlightened understanding, and approved itself to those, who had eyes to see, and ears to hear, and hearts to understand. Let every one examine it. If in that day had been known what is now known of man’s history, and of nature, and of what is seen of the possibility of raising men, throughout society, to a higher moral and intellectual level than was heretofore attainable, we may be sure that there would have been no attempt to discredit such knowledge, and such aspirations; and that they would have been urged as extending our knowledge of God, and of His will; that they would have been appealed to, and that men would have been called upon to raise themselves to the level of what had become conceivable, and, conceivably, attainable. At all events, the one great point, the one paramount duty, was to proclaim what was then seen to be true. To keep back nothing. To care nothing for the consequences, in the way of what it might overthrow; to be ready to spend and be spent for the consequences, in the way of the good it must produce. The requisite boldness would come to its promulgators from feeling, that it was God’s work, and that He was on their side. The issue could not be doubtful. The Gates of Hell could not prevail against the Truth. It was, notwithstanding its ‘maudlin sentimentality,’ mighty to the pulling down of strongholds; and went forth conquering, and to conquer. So will it do again. So will it do ever. The parallelism is complete at every point. It is only strange that it has not been seen, and dwelt upon, till all have become familiar with it. The facts, the situation, the ideas, the hopes and fears, are the same. So, too, is the language needed to describe them, each and all.

The thoughts, which this chapter outlines, were often, as might be supposed, in my mind during the little excursion described in the foregoing pages. They are, as far as I can see, the logical and inevitable conclusions of the acquaintance some have, such as it may be, with history and with physical science; and I suppose that travelling further along the same road would only enable them to see the object to which it leads with more distinctness. In Switzerland there is much both in the singularly varied mental condition of the people themselves, and in the impressive aspects of nature, to confirm them. The narrative, though its form, in keeping with the particular purpose in which it originated, is at times somewhat minute, may yet, as things were, for the most part, seen and regarded through the medium of ideas I have just referred to, contribute a little to their illustration. It was my wish, at all events, that my mind and heart should be always open, unreservedly, to the teaching of all that I saw, both of man and of nature; but still, I trust, with that caution, and sense of responsibility, that befit the formation of opinions, by which—for one is conscious that they are the inner man, the true self—one must stand, or fall, and in which one must live, and die.

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