o is a terrible
fact--a severe difficulty to faith. For to such a pass has the worship
of Knowledge--an idol vile even as Mammon himself, and more
cruel--arrived, that its priests, men kind as other men to their own
children, kind to the animals of their household, kind even to some of
the wild animals, men who will scatter crumbs to the robins in winter,
and set water for the sparrows on their house-top in summer, will yet,
in the worship of this their idol, in their greed after the hidden
things of the life of the flesh, without scruple, confessedly without
compunction, will, I say, dead to the natural motions of the divine
element in them, the inherited pity of God, subject innocent, helpless,
appealing, dumb souls to such tortures whose bare description would
justly set me forth to the blame of cruelty toward those who sat
listening to the same. Have these living, moving, seeing, hearing,
feeling creatures, who could not be but by the will and the presence of
Another any more than ourselves--have they no rights in this their
compelled existence? Does the most earnest worship of an idol excuse
robbery with violence extreme to obtain the sacrifices he loves? Does
the value of the thing that may be found there justify me in breaking
into the house of another's life? Does his ignorance of the existence of
that which I seek alter the case? Can it be right to water the tree of
knowledge with blood, and stir its boughs with the gusts of bitter
agony, that we may force its flowers into blossom before their time?
Sweetly human must be the delights of knowledge so gained! grand in
themselves, and ennobling in their tendencies! Will it justify the same
as a noble, a laudable, a worshipful endeavor to cover it with the
reason or pretext--God knows which--of such love for my own human kind
as strengthens me to the most ruthless torture of their poorer
relations, whose little treasure I would tear from them that it may
teach me how to add to their wealth? May my God give me grace to prefer
a hundred deaths to a life gained by the suffering of one simplest
creature. He holds his life as I hold mine by finding himself there
where I find myself. Shall I quiet my heart with the throbs of another
heart? soothe my nerves with the agonized tension of a system? live a
few days longer by a century of shrieking deaths? It were a hellish
wrong, a selfish, hateful, violent injustice. An evil life it were that
I gained or held by such foul mea