There is only one thing
that is safe; and that is truth. Do you know what the trouble was at
the time of the French Revolution? It was not that the people began to
reason and think, and lost their faith, as so frequently said by
superficial historians: it was that they waked up at last to the idea
that the aristocracy and the priesthood had not only been fleecing them
financially and keeping them down socially, but had been fooling them
religiously, until at last they broke away, having no confidence left
in God or priest or educated people or nobility or anything. No wonder
they made havoc. If you want to make a river dangerous, dam it up, keep
the waters back, until by and by the pressure from the hills and the
mountains becomes so great that it can be restricted no longer; and it
not only breaks through the dam, but bursts all barriers, floods the
country, sweeps away homes, farms, cattle, human beings, towns, cities,
leaving ruin in its path. Let rivers flow as God meant them to; and
they will be safe.
So let the world learn,-- learn gradually, and adapt itself to new
truth as it learns, and there will be an even and orderly march of
human progress. The danger is in our setting ourselves up as being
wiser than God, wiser than the universe, and doling out to the
multitude the little fragments of truth that we think are fitted for
their digestion. The impertinence of it, and the impiety of it!
I must not stop to deal with other reasons which lie in my mind this
morning.
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