multitudes of men, these attempts will at last issue, no one can now
tell. For we, like the Hebrews of old, shall all have to live and die in
faith, 'not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off,
and being persuaded of them, and embracing them, and confessing that we
are strangers and pilgrims on the earth.' Meanwhile, after the first
great glow and passion of the just and necessary revolt of reason
against superstition have slowly lost the exciting splendour of the
dawn, and become diffused in the colourless space of a rather bleak
noonday, the mind gradually collects again some of the ideas of the old
religion of the West, and willingly, or even joyfully, suffers itself to
be once more breathed upon by something of its spirit. Christianity was
the last great religious synthesis. It is the one nearest to us. Nothing
is more natural than that those who cannot rest content with
intellectual analysis, while awaiting the advent of the Saint Paul of
the humanitarian faith of the future, should gather up provisionally
such fragmentary illustrations of this new faith as are to be found in
the records of the old. Whatever form may be ultimately imposed on our
vague religious aspirations by some prophet to come, who shall unite
sublime depth of feeling and lofty purity of life with strong
intellectual grasp and the gift of a noble eloquence, we may at least be
sure of this, that it will stand as closely related to Christianity as
Christianity stood closely related to the old Judaic dispensation. It is
commonly assumed that the rejecters of the popular religion stand in
face of it, as the Christians stood in face of the pagan belief and
pagan rites in the Empire. The analogy is inexact. The modern denier, if
he is anything better than that, or entertains hopes of a creed to come,
is nearer to the position of the Christianising Jew.[20] Science, when
she has accomplished all her triumphs in her own order, will still have
to go back, when the time comes, to assist in the building up of a new
creed by which men can live. The builders will have to seek material in