Protestant or the Catholic theology of two centuries ago might have
done. Now mankind is developing better ideas of these little
arrangements of human psychology on the subject of God, though the
churches still try to enforce them in His name. But the time is
coming when the churches will be deserted by all thinking men,
unless they cease trying to uphold, as the teachings of God, mere
creeds of their ecclesiastical founders. Very few men reject all
belief in God; and it is no man's right to inquire in what any
man's belief consists; men do reject and have a right to reject
what some man writes out as the eternal truth of the matter."

"And now," he said, turning to her sorrowfully, "that is the best
or the worst of what I believe--according as one may like it or not
like it. I see all things as a growth, a sublime unfolding by the
Laws of God. The race ever rises toward Him. The old things which
were its best once die off from it as no longer good. Its charity
grows, its justice grows. All the nobler, finer elements of its
spirit come forth more and more--a continuous advance along the
paths of Law. And the better the world, the larger its knowledge,
the easier its faith in Him who made it and who leads it on. The
development of Man is itself the great Revelation of Him! But I
have studied these things ignorantly, only a little while. I am at
the beginning of my life, and hope to grow. Still I stand where I
have placed myself. And now, are you like the others: do you give
me up?"

He faced her with the manner in which he had sat before his
professors, conceiving himself as on trial a second time. He had in
him the stuff of martyrs and was prepared to stand by his faith at
the cost of all things.