Page:Calvinism, an address delivered at St. Andrew's, March 17, 1871.djvu/24

 imaginative and the weak a contemptible superstition, to the educated a mockery, to knaves and hypocrites a cloak of iniquity, to all alike—to those who suffer and those who seem to profit by it—a lie so palpable as to be worse than atheism itself.

There comes a time when all this has to end. The over-indulgence of the few is the over-penury of the many. Injustice begets misery, and misery resentment. Something happens perhaps— some unusual oppression, or some act of religious mendacity especially glaring. Such a person as I am supposing asks himself, 'What is the meaning of these things?' His eyes are opened. Gradually he discovers that he is living surrounded with falsehood, drinking lies like water, his conscience polluted, his intellect degraded by the abominations which envelop his existence. At first perhaps he will feel most keenly for himself. He will not suppose that he can set to rights a world that is out of joint, but he will himself relinquish his share in what he detests and despises. He withdraws into himself. If what others are doing and saying is obviously wrong, then he has to ask himself what is right, and what is the true purpose of his existence. Light breaks more clearly on him. He becomes conscious of impulses towards something purer and higher than he has yet experienced or even imagined. Whence these impulses come he cannot tell. He is too keenly aware of the selfish and cowardly thoughts which rise up to mar and thwart his nobler aspirations to believe that they can possibly be his own. If he conquers his baser