The cover image was created by the transcriber, and is in the public domain.
ECLECTIC MAGAZINE OF FOREIGN LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.
| New Series. |  | FEBRUARY, 1885. |  | Old Series complete |
| Vol. XLI., No. 2. | in 63 vols. |
A FAITHLESS WORLD.
BY FRANCES POWER COBBE.
A little somnolence seems to have overtaken religious controversy of late. We are either weary of it or have grown so tolerant of our differences that we find it scarcely worth while to discuss them. By dint of rubbing against each other in the pages of the Reviews, in the clubs, and at dinner parties, the sharp angles of our opinions have been smoothed down. Ideas remain in a fluid state in this temperate season of sentiment, and do not, as in old days, crystallize into sects. We have become almost as conciliatory respecting our views as the Chinese whom Huc describes as carrying courtesy so far as to praise the religion of their neighbors and depreciate their own. “You, honored sir,” they were wont to say, “are of the noble and lofty religion of Confucius. I am of the poor and insignificant religion of Lao-tze.” Only now and then some fierce controversialist, hailing usually from India or the colonies where London amenities seem not yet to have penetrated, startles us by the desperate earnestness wherewith he disproves what we had almost forgotten that anybody seriously believes.