I
confess I felt disposed to ask the asker this question: and how do you
propose to cure it with such a religion as yours? How is the ideal of a
life so unlovely, so unattractive, so incomplete, so narrow, so far
removed from a true and satisfying ideal of human perfection, as is the
life of your religious organization as you yourself reflect it, to
conquer and transform all this vice and hideousness? Indeed, the
strongest plea for the study of perfection as pursued by culture, the
clearest proof of the actual inadequacy of the idea of perfection held
by the religious organizations,--expressing, as I have said, the most
widespread effort which the human race has yet made after perfection,--
is to be found in the state of our life and society with these in
possession of it, and having been in possession of it I know not how
many hundred years. We are all of us included in some religious
organization or other; we all call ourselves, in the sublime and
aspiring language of religion which I have before noticed, _children of
God_.
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