Page:Toleration and other essays.djvu/16

 tiality and transubstantiation, took the gilt off our Old Testament, and elevated our bishops to the rank of citizens. I then fancy him peeping into the fine schools of London or Manchester, and learning that the first educational authorities in England still set children to learn about Adam and Eve, the Deluge, the Plagues of Egypt, and the remarkable proceedings of Joshua and David and the rest. I try to conceive him studying the faces of learned judges and professors, as they listen gravely to the reading of the Bible and the creeds in church on Sundays, or reverently handle the book in court. I picture his amazement as he learns that this England, which he thought so enlightened, still, at the dictation of its bishops, retains the most abominable divorce law in the civilised world; or hears preachers and social students seriously expressing concern for the future of Europe on account of the decay of docility to the clergy. What would he have written on such a situation?

The satire of Voltaire is not out of place in modern England. As long as the Bible is, however insincerely, pressed on us as the Word of God, and retained in our schools, we are compelled to point out in it features which make such claims ludicrous. As long as the clergy maintain that their rule in the past was a benefit to civilisation, and therefore its decay may be a menace to civilisation, we are bound to tell the ugly truth in regard to the past. As long as educated men and women among us profess a belief in the magic of transubstantiation and auricular confession and miracles, and the uneducated are encouraged to believe these things literally,