The arguments of those who resist Progress are always the same, whether it be Pagans against Hebrews, Jews against Christians, Romanists against Protestants, or modern Christians against the advocates of a higher spiritualism.  Each established system assures its votaries, that now at length they have attained a final perfection:  that their foundations are irremovable:  progress up to that position was a duty, beyond it is a sin.  Each displaces its predecessor by superior goodness, but then each fights against his successor by odium, contempt, exclusions and (when possible) by violences.  Each advances mankind one step, and forbids them to take a second.  Yet if it be admitted that in the earlier movement the party of progress was always right, confidence that the case is now reversed is not easy to justify.

Every persecuting church has numbered among its members thousands of pious people, so grateful for its services, or so attached to its truth, as to think those impious who desire something purer and more perfect.  Herein we may discern, that every nation and class is liable to the peculiar illusion of overesteeming the sanctity of its ancestral creed.  It is as much our duty to beware of this illusion, as of any other.  All know how easily our patriotism may degenerate into an unjust repugnance to foreigners, and that the more intense it is, the greater the need of antagonistic principles.  So also, the real excellencies of our religion may only so much the more rivet us in a wrong aversion to those who do not acknowledge its authority or perfection.

It is probable that Jesus desired a state of things in which all who worship God spiritually should have an acknowledged and conscious union.  It is clear that Paul longed above all things to overthrow the “wall of partition” which separated two families of sincere worshippers.  Yet we now see stronger and higher walls of partition than ever, between the children of the same God,—­with a new law of the letter, more entangling to the conscience, and more depressing to the mental energies, than any outward service of the Levitical law.  The cause of all this is to be found in the claim of Messiahship for Jesus. This gave a premium to crooked logic, in order to prove that the prophecies meant what they did not mean and could not mean.  This perverted men’s notions of right and wrong, by imparting factitious value to a literary and historical proposition, “Jesus is the Messiah,” as though that were or could be religion.  This gave merit to credulity, and led pious men to extol it as a brave and noble deed, when any one overpowered the scruples of good sense, and scolded them down as the wisdom of this world, which is hostile to God.  This put the Christian church into an essentially false position, by excluding from it in the first century all the men of most powerful and cultivated understanding among the Greeks and Romans.  This taught Christians to boast of the hostility of the wise and prudent, and in every controversy ensured that the party which had the merit of mortifying reason most signally should be victorious.  Hence, the downward career of the Church into base superstition was determined and inevitable from her very birth; nor was any improvement possible, until a reconciliation should be effected between Christianity and the cultivated reason which it had slighted and insulted.