is true in politics. How many men can you get fairly to consider the
political position of his opponent? He not only doubts the rightness
and the sense of it, but he is ready to deny it. How many people can
you get fairly to weigh the position of one who occupies a religious
home different from their own? And these religious prejudices, being
bound up with the tenderest and noblest sentiments, feelings, and
traditions of the human heart, become the strongest of all, and so are
in more danger of standing in the way of human progress than anything
else in all the world.

People identify their theories of religion with religion itself, with
the honor of God, with the worship and the love of God, and feel that
somehow it is impious for them to consider the question whether their
intellectual theories are correct or not; and so the world stands by
the ideas of the past, and opposes anything like finer and nobler ideas
that offer themselves for consideration. And not only in the religious
field; but these religious prejudices stand in the way of accepting
truths outside the sphere of religion. For example, when Darwin
published his book, "The Origin of Species," the greatest opposition it
met with was from the religious world. Why? Had they considered
Darwin's arguments to find out whether they were true? Nothing of the
kind. But they flew to the sudden conclusion that somehow or other the
religion of the world was in danger, if Darwinism should prove to be
true. And it is very curious to note I wonder how long the world will
keep on repeating that serio-comic blunder from the very beginning it
has been the same; almost every single step that the world proposes to
take in advance is opposed by the constituted religious authorities of
the time because they assume at the outset that the theories which they
have been holding are divinely authorized and infallible, and that it
is not only untrue, this other statement, but that it is impious as