Whether this large catholicism, this worship of heroes, is the best of
what now remains of religion on earth is certainly questionable
enough; and if we regard it in no other light than merely as an
idolatry of persons, there is an easy answer ready for it. But
considering that religion is now so far dead that it consists in
little else than formalities, and that its divine truth is no longer
such to half the great world, which lies, indeed, in dire atrophy and
wickedness,--and if we further consider and agree that the awakened
human soul is the divinest thing on earth, and partakes of the divine
nature itself, and that its manifestations are also divine in
whomsoever it is embodied, we can see some apology for its adoption;
inasmuch as it is the divine likeness to which reverence and homage
are rendered, and not the person merely, but only so far as he is the
medium of its showing. Christianity, however, will assuredly survive,
although doubtless in a new form, preserving all the integrity of its
message,--and be once more faith and life to men, when the present
old, established, decaying cultus shall be venerated only as history.
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