5. Original sin effaceable by grace.
6. Perdition avoidable by faith in crucifixion.
7. Future life revealed.
These propositions were subjects of resonant hymns, sermons, and tracts, and were not, and are not, disowned, but still defended in discussion by orthodox and clerical advocates. Save salvation by the blood of Christ (a painful idea to entertain), the other ideas might well fascinate the uninquiring. They had enchanted many believers, but the explorers of whom we speak had acquired the questioning spirit, and had learned prudently to look at both sides of familiar subjects and soon discovered that the fair-seeming propositions which had formerly imposed on their imagination were unsound, unsightly, and unsafe. The Syracusans of old kept a school in which slaves were taught the ways of bondage. Christianity has kept such a school in which subjection of the understanding was inculcated, and the pupils, now free to investigate, resolved to see whether such things were true.
Then began the reign of refutation of theological error, by some from indignation at having been imposed upon, by others from zeal that misconception should end; by more from enthusiasm for facts; by the bolder sort from resentment at the intimidation and cruelty with which inquiry had been suppressed so long; and by not a few from the love of disputation which has for some the delight men have for chess or cricket, or other pursuit which has conflict and conquest in it.
Self-determined thought is a condition of the progress of nations. Where would science be but for open thought, the nursing mother of enterprise, of discovery, of invention, of new conditions of human betterment?
A modern Hindu writer* tells us that: "The Hindu is sorely handicapped by customs which are prescribed by his religious books. Hedged in by minute rules and restrictions the various classes forming the Hindu community have had but little room for expansion and progress. The result has been stagnation. Caste has prevented the Hindus from sinking, but it has also preventing them from rising."
* Pramatha Nath Bose.
The old miracle-bubbles which the Jews blew into the air of wonder two thousand years ago, delight churches still in their childhood. The sea of theology would have been stagnant centuries ago, had not insurgent thinkers, at the peril of their lives, created commotion in it. Morals would have been poisoned on the shores of theology had not free thought purified the waters by putting the salt of reason into that sea, freshening it year by year.