But the character of the God of Christendom admits of a much more thorough reformation than that effected by the Catholic Church. Tender spirits, offended, like Uncle Toby, at the notion that even the worst of beings should be damned to all eternity, have simply refused to accept the notion of endless torture. Thinkers, aiming at a system of abstract justice, have sought to prove that it could not be. Theologians have contrived all sorts of shifts to dispense with the necessity of believing it. Modern feeling, whether on grounds of logic or of sentiment, has gradually come to suppress it more and more as an inconvenient article in the nominal creed, to be, if not consciously rejected, at least instinctively thrust as much as possible out of sight. There has resulted an idea of the Deity in which the harsher elements are swept away, and the gentler ones, such as his fatherhood, his care, and his love, are left behind. Such writers as Theodore Parker, Francis W. Newman, and Frances Power Cobb, have carried this ideal to the highest point of perfection of which it appears to be capable. Their God is still the God of Christendom, but refined, purified and exalted. The work which the Jewish prophets began, which Jesus carried on, at which all the nations of Christendom have labored, they have most worthily completed. Whether the ideal thus attained is destined to be final, whether it really represents the ultimate possibilities of religious thought that can remain as the corner-stone of a universal faith, are questions that can be answered only when we have undertaken the complete analysis of those most general constituents of all theological systems which the foregoing examination has disclosed. On that last analysis we are about to enter.
"Ach, mein Kindchen, schon als Knabe,
Als ich sass auf Mutters Schoss,
Glaubte ich an Gott den Vater,
Der da waltet gut und gross.
"Der die schöne Erd' erschaffen,
Und die schönen Menschen d'rauf,
Der den Sonnen, Monden, Sternen,
Vorgezeichnet ihren Lauf.
"Als ich grösser wurde, Kindchen,