Cor facit theologum. The heart makes the theologian.  Every race, every civilization, either has a new revelation of its own or a new interpretation of an old one.  Democratic America has a different humanity from feudal Europe, and so must have a new divinity.  See, for one moment, how intelligence reacts on our faiths.  The Bible was a divining-book to our ancestors, and is so still in the hands of some of the vulgar.  The Puritans went to the Old Testament for their laws; the Mormons go to it for their patriarchal institution.  Every generation dissolves something new and precipitates something once held in solution from that great storehouse of temporary and permanent truths.

You may observe this:  that the conversation of intelligent men of the stricter sects is strangely in advance of the formulae that belong to their organizations.  So true is this, that I have doubts whether a large proportion of them would not have been rather pleased than offended, if they could have overheard our talk.  For, look you, I think there is hardly a professional teacher who will not in private conversation allow a large part of what we have said, though it may frighten him in print; and I know well what an under-current of secret sympathy gives vitality to those poor words of mine which sometimes get a hearing.

I don’t mind the exclamation of any old stager who drinks Madeira worth from two to six Bibles a bottle, and burns, according to his own premises, a dozen souls a year in the cigars with which he muddles his brains.  But for the good and true and intelligent men whom we see all around us, laborious, self-denying, hopeful, helpful,—­men who know that the active mind of the century is tending more and more to the two poles, Rome and Reason, the sovereign church or the free soul, authority or personality, God in us or God in our masters, and that, though a man may by accident stand half-way between these two points, he must look one way or the other,—­I don’t believe they would take offence at anything I have reported of our late conversation.

But supposing any one do take offence at first sight, let him look over these notes again, and see whether he is quite sure he does not agree with most of these things that were said amongst us.  If he agrees with most of them, let him be patient with an opinion he does not accept, or an expression or illustration a little too vivacious.  I don’t know that I shall report any more conversations on these topics; but I do insist on the right to express a civil opinion on this class of subjects without giving offence, just when and where I please,—­unless, as in the lecture-room, there is an implied contract to keep clear of doubtful matters.  You didn’t think a man could sit at a breakfast-table doing nothing but making puns every morning for a year or two, and never give a thought to the two thousand of his fellow-creatures who are passing into another state during every hour that he sits talking and laughing!  Of course, the one matter that a real human being cares for is what is going to become of them and of him.  And the plain truth is, that a good many people are saying one thing about it and believing another.