Page:OptimismBlood.djvu/20

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SECTION IV.

THE MOTIVES OF ALL THEORISTS.

Perhaps the true religion has been hit upon; yet it might not continue, in the want of exterior confirmation. And still, as of old, the last words of the prophet who believes himself a prophet shall echo the mournful cry of Jesus, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"—Why did all earth's theorists preach and write? Did they believe that "they were the people, and wisdom would die with them?" Nay—behind the eye of the prophet the brain ached with labor. The theorists of to-day are the theorists of two thousand years ago. Those wrote as these do—not more to convince others than to make the concurrence of others convince them. Are they crowned? and is the crown refreshing?—not more for its honor than for that it comforts and conceals the baldness of their brows. Never a prophet comprehended the infinite; never a prophet held through age the opinions of his youth: rather shall we hold that all theology has been the varying convictions of men who often shifted their point of vision, and held their last opinions less confidently than they did their first. For why?—They had a lingering faith in the democratic mind. The traveller in lands where man never trod before—where the glories of nature lure him on in ecstacy, would fain tear up every shrub and flower, and bring them, with the birds all stuffed and the landscapes painted, to the land of his birth,

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