I am
reminded that this dark theology, like a great idol, has been rolling
its ponderous car over the world for ages--I follow its desolating
track, by the wreck of noble minds--by the fearful wail of the lost
spirit, and the crushed hopes and affections of those I love! Oh! when I
look at this picture, drawn with the pencil of reality, in all its deep
shadows and startling colors, the brain is oppressed and the heart is
sick; and while I would stifle the inquiry, it finds an utterance:--In
the name of reason, of humanity and heaven, is there no hope for
man?"[270]
This declamatory lament over the theology of the evangelical Christian
church is a repetition of an old skeptical charge. It is the expression
of a spirit similar to that which animated the German Rationalists,
prompted the criticism of Colenso and of the _Essays and Reviews_, and
is now ready to welcome any effort that may promise a revolution of the
popular religious sentiment in Great Britain and the American Republic.
Orthodoxy is unhesitatingly pronounced a public curse.
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