Page:Theological essays (IA theologicalessay00maurrich).pdf/15
position. I feel the temptation to accept a distinction which sets the conscience so much at ease, and gives one's vanity such a pleasant stimulus. But I cannot do so without proving myself not to be what the Reviewer is kind enough to say that I am, but the very opposite of it,—without being guilty of a conscious and inward falsehood. I know that the Creed which leads me, as the Reviewer thinks, to contradict my better nature, gives me an interest in my fellows, a sympathy with mankind, which I have not naturally, and which I find it exceedingly hard to maintain. I know that that Creed has led me to desire truth in my inward parts, and to resist those tendencies to "juggling" and trickery into which the Reviewer supposes that it tempts me.
I know, moreover that the belief in fixed Articles respecting the relations and acts of God has enabled me, and does enable me, to believe that the world is progressive, and not stationary; just as the belief in the fixed article respecting gravitation has given an impulse to all the inquiries of natural students. If, after nearly 6,000 years of man's existence, we assume that nothing is known respecting the questions which men have felt to concern them most, we shall not expect that anything will be known. I contend that articles do not crush inquiry, but awaken it; that they do not hinder education, but show how we may avoid superstitions which have hindered it most effectually; that they do not oblige us to be harsh or repulsive to any men of any sect, but qualify us to understand them, to sympathise with them, to justify their opposing thoughts, to reconcile them. These doctrines I main-