al guaranty for progress, for a state of things once compatible
may, for any thing we can say, always remain compatible with infinite
wisdom and goodness. As a matter of historical fact, theology only
suggested the dogma of man's utter vileness, and all genuine theologians
are marked by their readiness to believe in deterioration instead of
progress. They look forward to a future world instead of this. But what
reason have they to believe in this future of blessedness? God's love
for His creatures? But the most prominent fact written on the whole
surface of the world is what we cannot help calling the reckless and
profuse waste of life. If every thing we see teaches us that millions of
individuals are crushed at every step by the progress of the race, and
if that process is, as it must be, compatible with infinite goodness,
why suppose that infinite goodness will act differently in future? It is
an ever-recurring but utterly fruitless sophistry which first infers God
from nature, and then pronounces God to be different from nature.

The only meaning, indeed, which can be given to the theological
statement when thus interpreted is that we should accustom ourselves to
look with reverence and love upon the universe. That love and reverence
are emotions which deserve our most strenuous efforts at cultivation;
that we should be profoundly impressed by the vast system of which we
form an infinitesimal part; that we should habitually think of ourselves
in relation to the long perspective of events which stretches far away
from us to the dim distance and toward the invisible future, are indeed
lessons which all sound reasoning tends to confirm. But when we are
invited to love and wonder at the world, as the work of God, we must
guard against the old trick of substitution which is constantly played
upon us. Once more, the God of nature is turned into the God of a part
of nature. Theology of the old stamp, so far from encouraging us to love
nature, teaches us that it is under a curse. It teaches us to look upon
the animal creation with shuddering disgust; upon the whole race of man,
outside our narrow sect, as delivered over to the devil; and upon the
laws of nature at large as a temporary mechanism, in which we have been
caught, but from which we are to anticipate a joyful deliverance. It is
science, not theology, which has changed all this; it is the atheists,
infidels, and rationalists, as they are kindly called, who have taught