And none of these creeds and dogmas will, as a whole, stand criticism. They fall before the thinker into irretrievable ruin, and therefore the freethinker imagines he has destroyed religion. But religion lives on, and he wonders why. He puts it down to the blindness of men. The theologian rejoices because the continued life of religion seems to him the vindication of the creeds. Yet are they both wrong. Men are not fools, nor does religion live by the truth of its creeds. The whole initial idea has been mistaken. The creeds are but theories to explain religion. Scientific men have invented the ether and theories connected with it to explain heat and light and electricity. These theories are good now, and are universally accepted, but they are not proved. Supposing a hundred years hence wider perception and new facts should throw great doubts on whether ether exists at all as supposed, or on the present theories of heat and electricity? Suppose, too, that the old school scientists are stubborn and refuse to meet these new thoughts? What will the sensible man do? Will he say, "This theory of ether waves is untenable, exploded, foolish, and therefore I will believe it no longer; and as the theory is wrong, so too the phenomena of the theory are all imaginations. There are no such things as heat and light, and I will not warm myself in the sun." Would that be sense? I think reason would reply, "I am sorry the old theories are gone. They were true while they lasted. But now they are dead, and we have not found new ones. Yet if the theory be dead, the facts are still there. The sun still shines, and we have heat and light. These things are true. No man shall frighten me and say, 'If you will not believe our science you shall not warm yourself at our sun. You shall not light your fire or your lamp unless you admit ether waves.' Perhaps a new theory may arise. But anyhow I have the sun yet, and my lamp is not broken. They are facts still." That is exactly the present position as regards many faiths. The creeds are theories to explain facts. The theories are very old and we have grown out of them. The theologians will not surrender them, clinging to them in the imagination that they really are religion, and that without them religion will fall, conjuring with words to try and support them.