The consideration on which so many persons rely, that an existing institution, though destined to be replaced by a better, performs useful functions provisionally, is really not to the point.  It is an excellent reason why the institution should not be removed or fundamentally modified, until public opinion is ripe for the given piece of improvement.  But it is no reason at all why those who are anxious for the improvement, should speak and act just as they would do if they thought the change perfectly needless and undesirable.  It is no reason why those who allow the provisional utility of a belief or an institution or a custom of living, should think solely of the utility and forget the equally important element of its provisionalness.  For the fact of its being provisional is the very ground why every one who perceives this element, should set himself to act accordingly.  It is the ground why he should set himself, in other words, to draw opinion in every way open to him—­by speech, by voting, by manner of life and conduct—­in the direction of new truth and the better practice.  Let us not, because we deem a thing to be useful for the hour, act as if it were to be useful for ever.  The people who selfishly seek to enjoy as much comfort and ease as they can in an existing state of things, with the desperate maxim, ‘After us, the deluge,’ are not any worse than those who cherish present comfort and case and take the world as it comes, in the fatuous and self-deluding hope, ’After us, the millennium.’  Those who make no sacrifice to avert the deluge, and those who make none to hasten their millennium, are on the same moral level.  And the former have at least the quality of being no worse than their avowed principle, while the latter nullify their pretended hopes by conformities which are only proper either to profound social contentment, or to profound social despair.  Nay, they seem to think that there is some merit in this merely speculative hopefulness.  They act as if they supposed that to be very sanguine about the general improvement of mankind, is a virtue that relieves them from taking trouble about any improvement in particular.

If those who defend a given institution are doing their work well, that furnishes the better reason why those who disapprove of it and disbelieve in its enduring efficacy, should do their work well also.  Take the Christian churches, for instance.  Assume, if you will, that they are serving a variety of useful functions.  If that were all, it would be a reason for conforming.  But we are speaking of those for whom the matter does not end here.  If you are convinced that the dogma is not true; that a steadily increasing number of persons are becoming aware that it is not true; that its efficacy as a basis of spiritual life is being lowered in the same degree as its credibility; that both dogma and church must be slowly replaced by higher forms of faith, if not also by more effective organisations; then, all who hold such views as these have as distinctly a function in the community as the ministers and upholders of the churches, and the zeal of the latter is simply the most monstrously untenable apology that could be invented for dereliction of duty by the former.