Errors in punctuation and inconsistent hyphenation were not corrected unless otherwise noted.
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FOOTNOTES:
[ [1] The best summary of the benefits which the Christian religion has historically wrought for mankind is, I think, to be found in that eloquent book “Gesta Christi,” by the great American philanthropist, Mr. Charles Brace.
The author has made no attempt to delineate the shadowy side of the glowing picture, the evils of superstition and persecution wherewith men have marred those benefits.
[ [2] He says: “The leading doctrines of theology are noble and glorious;” and he acknowledges that people who were able to accept them are “ennobled by their creed.” They are “carried above and beyond the petty side of life; and if the virtue of propositions depended, not upon the evidence by which they may be supported, but their intrinsic beauty and utility, they might vindicate their creed against all others” (p. 917). To some of us the notion of “noble and glorious” fictions is difficult to accept. The highest thought of our poor minds, whatever it be, has surely as such some presumption in favor of its truth.
[ [3] “Agnostic Morality,” Contemporary Review, June, 1883.
[ [4] British tonnage increased from 4,272,962 in 1850 to 5,710,968 in 1860; American tonnage from 3,485,266 in 1850 to 5,297,177 in 1860. On the 30th of June, 1883, twenty years after the civil war, American tonnage stood at 4,235,487!
[ [5] “The poet doubtless here refers to his Priory of St. Cosme-en-l’Isle; of which, Duperron, in his funeral oration on Ronsard, has said: ‘This Priory is placed in a very agreeable situation on the banks of the river Loire, surrounded by thickets, streams, and all the natural beauties which embellish Touraine, of which it is, as it were, the eye and the charm.’ Ronsard, in fact, returned thither to die.”—Sainte-Beuve, ‘Poésie Française au XVIe. Siècle’ (Paris, 1869), p. 307.
[ [6] I give a brief sketch of this in my book, “La Prusse et l’Autriche depuis Sadowa,” vol. i., p. 265.