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"I am weary of life; and I am forced to see that belief in absurdities is necessary to human minds, and that it is born in them as insects are born in swamps." He shocked Mendelssohn, and even Wagner, by his irreligion. "You make me laugh with your old words about a mission to fulfil. What a missionary!
Then he saw also that it matters little what profession, whether of religion or irreligion, a man may make, provided only he follows it out with charitable inconsistency, and without insisting on it to the bitter end. It is in the uncompromisingness with which dogma is held and not in the dogma or want of dogma that the danger lies.
Denouncing the policy of getting all one could out of the slaves and of giving back as little as possible, Jones undertook to show how their spiritual improvement would exterminate their ignorance, vulgarity, idleness, improvidence, and irreligion; Jones thought that if the circumstances of the Negroes were changed, they would equal, if not excel, the rest of the human family "in majesty of intellect, elegance of manners, purity of morals, and ardor of piety."
'Some things, he writes, 'requisite for popularity I would not have if I could, and others I could not have if I would. But at Olney his unpopularity redounded to his credit. No man could have done his duty there without being unpopular. The evils against which Scott had to contend were of a more subtle and complicated kind than simple irreligion and immorality.
They never laughed at God's word, though they cut off a king's head. Yes; it was for us to prove how disloyalty goes hand in hand with irreligion, and all other vices come trooping in the train. Nowadays men commit robbery and sacrilege for the mere luxury of wickedness, as this advertisement testifies.
"It is scarcely necessary for us to remind you, dearly beloved brethren, that the seeds of irreligion and anarchy thus sown broadcast over the fair face of France, have already produced a too abundant harvest of evils, perhaps the most disastrous recorded on the page of history.
In all the Errors and monstrous Productions of Nature, can any appear more deform'd than a Man of Parts, who employs his admirable Qualities in bringing Piety into Contempt, putting Vertue to the Blush, and making Sobriety of Manners the common Subject of his Mirth; while with Zeal and Industry, he propagates the malignant Contagion of Vice and Irreligion, poisons his Friends and Admirers, and promotes the Destruction of his native Country?
Irreligion, accidentally associated with philanthropy, triumphed for a time over religion accidentally associated with political and social abuses. Everything gave way to the zeal and activity of the new reformers. In France, every man distinguished in letters was found in their ranks.
"I don't understand this new notion of Draper's," he said abruptly. "Where's he got it from? No one ever learned irreligion in my household." He turned his eyes on Millner, who had the sense of being scrutinized through a ground-glass window which left him visible while it concealed his observer. The young man let his pen describe two or three vague patterns on the blank sheet before him.
He puts on a mannerism, because he has seen the members of a certain literary 'set' in London put it on but he'll drop that in time, when he is a little older and wiser. He has been in to see me once or twice since he took up his residence here for the summer. He tries to discuss religion with me or rather, I should say. irreligion. His own special 'cult' is the easy paganism of Omar Kayyam."
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