To assume, as the Atheist and
Deist seem to do, that Christianity is a sort of disease that came upon
civilization, an unprofitable and wasting disease, is to deny that
conception of a progressive scheme and rightness which we have taken as
our basis of belief. As I have already confessed, the Scheme of
Salvation, the idea of a process of sorrow and atonement, presents
itself to me as adequately true. So far I do not think my new faith
breaks with my old. But it follows as a natural consequence of my
metaphysical preliminaries that I should find the Christian theology
Aristotelian, over defined and excessively personified. The painted
figure of that bearded ancient upon the Sistine Chapel, or William
Blake's wild-haired, wild-eyed Trinity, convey no nearer sense of God to
me than some mother-of-pearl-eyed painted and carven monster from the
worship of the South Sea Islanders. And the Miltonic fable of the
offended creator and the sacrificial son! it cannot span the circle of
my ideas; it is a little thing, and none the less little because it is
intimate, flesh of my flesh and spirit of my spirit, like the drawings
of my youngest boy.
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