The Bible being an exposition of truth as it has been revealed to different nations in different ages, and receiving its coloring from all varieties of temperament, may be brought to the support of every shade of opinion and every form of belief. But the moment any sect sets up its claim to infallibility and shuns investigation, it begins its career as a spiritual despotism.
The religious element is inherent and will find expression in some form. It gives rise to church organizations which, though an imperfect expression of what the soul would aspire to, are in their origin the outward symbol of a truth yet but dimly revealed to the inner consciousness, destined to become clearer and more spiritual in its conceptions, so long as freedom of thought counteracts the natural tendency of organizations to supplant the living spirit by the dead letter. The great error of the religious world is, its proneness to substitute the infallibility of belief for the immutability of faith, and hence the conflict ever going on between faith and conscience on the one side, and belief and temporary expediency on the other, which makes every age a protest against the religious creed of the preceding one. As there is but one God there can be but one manifestation of his spirit. It is the same trust in him, the same hatred of wrong and oppression, that has inspired the prophets and apostles, the martyrs and reformers of all ages, whether believers in the Jewish rituals, the stern tenets of Calvinism, or the mild and beneficent sway of that eternal and unchanging Love by which the ever merciful Father overrules the sins of all his
