I had a strange experience to-day, Sunday. I went into a church, and high
up by the altar, dressed in solemn garb and offering prayers to God--I saw
an infidel!

He preached a sermon. The theme of his sermon was "Liberalism."

"These men," cried the preacher, "are blinding our eyes to our salvation,
they are undermining, day by day, our faith! They tell us that the sacred
word of God is 'literature'! And they show us more 'literature'; but oh, my
friends, what new _Bible_ have they shown us!"

As I got up and went out of that church, I whispered: "What a dreadful
thing it is to be an infidel!"

Oh Dante and Goethe and Shakespeare--oh Wordsworth and Shelley and Emerson!
Oh thrice-anointed and holy spirits! What a dreadful thing it is to be an
infidel!

What a dreadful thing it is to believe in a Bible, and not to believe in
literature--to believe in a Bible and not to believe in a God!

You think that this world lives upon the revelation of two thousand years
ago! Fool--this world lives as your body lives by the beating of its
heart--upon the revelation and the effort of each instant of its life. And
to-day or to-morrow the great Revealer might send to some lonely thinker in
his garret a new word that would scatter to dust and ashes all laws and all
duties that now are known to men.

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