I think that the surest way to advance mankind would be to refine the blind natural impulses of the barbarian (who comes in between the savage and the man of culture) with the philosophy and polished tastes of civilization. When there are no more savages or barbarians left in the world it will be all over with us.
As nations improve, so do their gods. Since, however, the latter cannot very well be immediately deprived of all the human attributes that ruder times have assigned them, intelligent people pass over much in the old doctrines as incomprehensible, or else put a figurative construction on them.
As long as the different religions are but so many religious dialects things are very well: all that is required is that the intention, the sense, be the same and a good one. What matters it after all whether a person prostrates himself before a wooden Christ, if the process makes a better man of him! The chief thing is that the religion should so stand upon its own merits as to occasion good (to borrow Semmler’s expression) “in every tongue." It shows little wisdom on the part of certain people, then, to make fun of the religious customs of others ; for this attitude simply proves their inability to grasp the essential meaning of the Bible. If doubts arise in the minds of the people, the learned ought to know how to dissipate them; but it betrays inexpressible stupidity for the learned to write against the religion of the people and to try to
