And yet this man-born
structure of theology, with aisles and pillars fretting and crumbling under
the hand of reason, needs such eternal propping, restoring and repairing,
that priestly tinkers, masons, hod-carriers are solely occupied with it.
They grapple and fight for the poor shadows of dogma by which they live,
and, so engaged, the spirit and substance of religion is by them altogether
lost. None of the Christian churches will ever be overcrowded with men who
possess brain-power worthy the name. Mediocrity and ignorance may starve,
but talent and any new nostrum to strangle reason and keep the rot from the
fabric will always open their coffers.
Joan truly found the dogma more grateful and comforting than anything else
within her experience, and the apparition of a flesh and blood God, who had
saved her with His own life's blood before she was born, appeared too
beautiful and sufficing to be less than true. Her eyes, shut so long,
seemed opening at last. With errors that really signify nothing, she drew
to herself great truths that matter much and are vital to all elevated
conduct. She thought of other people and looked at them as one wakened from
sleep. And, similarly, she looked at Nature. Even her vanished lover had
not taught her all. There were truths below the formulae of his worship;
there were secrets deeper than his intellectual plummet had ever sounded.
Without understanding it, Joan yet knew that a change had come to pass in
material things.
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