Page:Some Mistakes of Moses.djvu/28

24 enigmas of this life. They will wish to know what we shall do with our criminals instead of what God will do with his&mdash;how we shall do away with beggary and want&mdash;with crime and misery&mdash;with prostitution, disease and famine,&mdash;with tyranny in all its cruel forms&mdash;with prisons and scaffolds, and how we shall reward the honest workers, and fill the world with happy homes! These are the problems for the pulpits and congregations of an enlightened future. If Science cannot finally answer these questions, it is a vain and worthless thing.

The clergy, however, will continue to answer them in the old way, until their congregations are good enough to set them free. They will still talk about believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, as though that were the only remedy for all human ills. They will still teach that retrogression is the only path that leads to light; that we must go back, that faith is the only sure guide, and that reason is a delusive glare, lighting only the road to eternal pain.

Until the clergy are free they cannot be intellectually honest. We can never tell what they really believe until they know that they can safely speak. They console themselves now by a secret resolution to be as liberal as they dare, with the hope that they