us hoped,
nor did the Spirit guide mankind by a brief and sure path into full
felicity and holiness, as Paul hoped.

The disappointment is a blank contradiction only for those who assume a
superhuman revelation in Scripture or in church, and then have to
reconcile this infallibility with that most fallible groping by which
alone mankind gets along. Unembarrassed at least by that difficulty, let
us note one natural cause of the imperfect progress of Christianity,
namely, the substitution of fancy for clear and sound knowledge of nature
and man, which was inwrought from the beginning in its creed.

We may recall the piercing question of Socrates, "Can virtue be taught?"
Can the best life be so clearly shown and so skillfully inculcated, that
it may be transmitted from man to man and from generation to generation
as surely and safely as the knowledge of a mechanical art or a physical
science? Socrates owned that he knew of no such way to teach
virtue,--that while Pericles could teach his son to be a good horseman,
he could not so guide him but that he became a bad man,--and Socrates
himself found no sure way to guide men into the heroic path he walked
himself.

Now Christianity offered a sort of knowledge as the proper training to
produce virtue. Its knowledge included certain genuine and precious
elements, such as the essential blessedness of purity and love; the trust
and peace which flow from duty done; the hope which springs from the
grave of a holy man;--ideas not new in substance, but wonderfully
vivified and vitalized. But along with this genuine knowledge,
Christianity blended in ever-growing volume a pseudo-knowledge. It had a
professed explanation of the nature of Deity, the nature of humanity, and
their mutual relation, which was so unreal that when applied to the
conduct of human life its fruit was often as ashes and the east wind.

To sum up the method by which Christianity wrought: its vital ideas of
character were infolded in a triple crust of Authority, Ceremony, Dogma.
Its ideas could scarcely have been propagated except under some such
incrustation. Pure gold must be mixed with alloy before it can be
worked. The new society would have quickly dissolved into chaos if it
had not had established laws and usages and discipline and rulers. The
craving of the average man for definite symbols fastened eagerly on the
cleansing water of baptism and the bread and wine of the love-feast. The
thoughtful