Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems.Fuller, Margaret
History
Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems.
Fuller, Margaret
Essays; Literature -- History and criticism; Poetry
The views of these writers are the opposite of all this. We need not
state them; they are sufficiently indicated in each page of their own.
Their conclusions are the natural result of such premises. We could say
nothing about either, except to express dissent from beginning to end.
Yet would it be sweet and noble, and worthy of this late period of human
progress, if their position had been stated in a spirit of religious, of
manly courtesy; if they had had the soul to say, "We differ from you,
but we know that so wide and full a stream of thought and emotion as you
are moved by could not, under the providential rule in which we believe,
have arisen in vain. The object of every such manifestation of life must
be to bring out truth; come, let us seek it together. Let us show you
our view, compare it with yours, and let us see which is the better. If,
as we think, the truth lie with us, what joy will it be for us to cast
the clear light on the object of your aspirations!"
Of this degree of liberality we have known some, even, who served the
same creed as these writers to be capable. There is, indeed, a higher
spirit, which, believing all forms of opinion which we hold in the
present stage of our growth can be but approximations to truth, and that
God has permitted to the multitude of men a multitude of ways by which
they may approach one common goal, looks with reverence on all modes of
faith sincerely held and acted upon, and while it rejoices in those
souls which have reached the higher stages of spiritual growth, has no
despair as to those which still grope in a narrow path and by a
glimmering light. Such liberality is, of course, out of the question
with such writers as the present. Their faith binds them to believe that
they have absolute truth, and that all who do not believe as they do are
wretched heretics. Those whose creed is of narrower scope are to them
hateful bigots; but also those with whom it is of wider are
latitudinarians or infidels. The spot of earth on which they stand is
the only one safe from the conflagration, and only through spectacles
and spyglasses such as are used by them can the sun and stars be seen.
Yet, as we said before, some such, though incapacitated for an
intellectual, are not so for a spiritual tolerance. With them the heart,
more Christ-like than the creed, urges to a spirit of love and reverence
even towards convictions opposed to their own. The sincere man is always
respectable in their eyes, and they cannot help feeling that, wherever
there is a desire for truth, there is the spirit of God, and his true
priests will approach with gentleness, and do their ministry with holy
care. Unhappily, it is very different with the persons before us.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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