And men have
got such a habit of giving to the language of religion a special
application, of making it a mere jargon, that for the condemnation which
religion itself passes on the shortcomings of their religious
organizations they have no ear; they are sure to cheat themselves and to
explain this condemnation away. They can only be reached by the
criticism which culture, like poetry, speaking a language not to be
sophisticated, and resolutely testing these organizations by the ideal
of a human perfection complete on all sides, applies to them.
But men of culture and poetry, it will be said, are again and again
failing, and failing conspicuously, in the necessary first stage to a
harmonious perfection, in the subduing of the great obvious faults of
our animality, which it is the glory of these religious organizations to
have helped us to subdue. True, they do often so fail. They have often
been without the virtues as well as the faults of the Puritan; it has
been one of their dangers that they so felt the Puritan's faults that
they too much neglected the practice of his virtues.
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