regarded as
remissible in consideration of vicarious suffering. If, then, the
religion is really what its dogmas declare, it is easier to assume
that it represents the cunning of a priesthood operating upon the
blind fears and wild imaginations of an inaccessible world; and the
ostensible proofs of a divine origin resting upon miraculous proofs
are not worth consideration. It professes to be a sanction to all
morality, but is forced to construct a mythology which outrages all
moral considerations. Taken as a serious statement of fact, the
anthropomorphism of the vulgar belief was open to the objections which
Socrates brought against the Pagan mythology. The supreme ruler was
virtually represented as arbitrary, cruel, and despotic.

If we ask the question, whether in point of fact the religion attacked
by 'Philip Beauchamp' fairly represented the religion of the day, we
should have, of course, to admit that it was in one sense a gross
caricature. If, that is, we asked what were the real roots of the
religious zeal of Wilberforce and the Evangelicals, or of the
philanthropists with whom even James Mill managed to associate on
friendly terms, it would be the height of injustice to assume that
they tried to do good simply from fear of hell and hope of heaven, or
that their belief in Christianity was due to a study of Paley's
_Evidences_. Their real motives were far nobler: genuine hatred of
injustice and sympathy for suffering, joined to the conviction that
the sects to which they belonged were working on the side of justice
and happiness; while the creeds which they accepted were somehow
congenial to their best feelings, and enabled them to give utterance
to their deepest emotions. But when they had to give a ground for that
belief they could make no adequate defence. They were better than
their ostensible creed, because the connection of their creed with
their morality was really arbitrary and traditional. We must always
distinguish between the causes of strong convictions and the reasons
officially assigned for them. The religious creed, as distinguished
from the religious sentiment, was really traditional, and rested upon
the simple fact that it was congenial to the general frame of mind.
Its philosophy meanwhile had become hopelessly incoherent. It wished
to be sensible, and admitted in principle the right of 'private
judgment' or rationalism so far as consistent with Protestantism. The
effect had been that in substan