"But similar events often do happen. The battle-field, the pestilence, man's evil passions, or the remorseless sea tossing man's feeble bark in sport against the rocks, cause many a grand sensation that is not good. See in that newly settled swamp the settler's wife surprised amid her household drudgeries with a startling shriek, and, hurrying to the water's edge, to find a rattlesnake coiled round her prattler's leg, inflicting the painful sting that causes the innocent child to expire in torture: do you call that good?"
"It does not follow that there is no good because we see it not! The design of the creation may involve a hidden good to be evolved out of what seems evil."
"And meantime the longer we pursue our researches, the more we become convinced that an all-pervading inexorable law governs events by necessary connection; that there is no resisting the force of this law, no disarming it. All that we can do is to study it, and take what comfort we can individually by an intelligent application of it to ourselves."
"And our neighbor's happiness is to tell for nothing?"
"You will do no good by forcing any system on men for which they are not prepared," said Mr. Spence. "Ideas remain inoperative when the civilization or intelligence to which it is addressed is unequal to its realization; practice does not depend on theories, but on development, on individual assimilation of the principles, if I may be permitted to use this word. For instance, moral theories are ever the same. The Hindoo, the Chinaman, the follower of Zoroaster and the transcribers of the precepts of Menu, declare with the Jew and the Christian, that the law is to be honest, virtuous, heedful of others' pleasure or good, to seek justice, love mercy, reverence age, and submit to all lawful authority, etc.—each precept requiring a willing obedience; yet where are the fruits to be found?"
"But do men believe these precepts to be the rule of right?"
"Theoretically they are not disputed, but practically man is made by the external objects that surround him. Give society a system below its advancement, it rises superior to it; give it one above it, it does not come up to it. This is observable in nations. Among the lower order of French Catholics there is less of bigotry and civilization, with more of the real charity enjoined by religion, than among the lower order of Scotch Protestants, despite the theory of their theology. [Footnote 206] Again, the Swedes and the inhabitants of some of the Swiss Cantons are less civilized than the French, and therefore it avails them little that they three centuries ago adopted a creed to which the force of habit and the influence of tradition now oblige them to cling. Whoever has travelled in these countries will see how little the inhabitants have benefited by their religion, while in France you will see an illiberal religion accompanied by liberal views, and a creed full of superstitions professed by a people among whom superstition is comparatively rare." [Footnote 206]
[Footnote 206: See Buckle's Civilization in England. Vol i. pages 191-193, from which above is extracted. (There are two references and only one footnote on this page.—Transcriber)]
"That would rather go to prove Catholicity to be better than Protestanism," said Hester; "at least, if liberal views and tolerant actions be a proof of the advancement of society."
Mr. Godfrey bit his lips, and Mr. Spence, suddenly mindful of certain proceedings in his friend's family not exactly of the tolerative description, hastily essayed to cover his mistake: