Idols and Ideals, with an Essay on Christianity

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1877 Excerpt: ...would continue to repeat the charities of her life--is a more religious, a more unselfish ideal, than the resurrection for an existence of personal bliss represented in the vulgar heaven? It is true that the idea of conscious immortality is not involved in the absurdity of bodily resurrection. Certainly there may be a very high ideal which hopes for the renewal of conscious activity of mind and heart. But whatever be the dream, the salient fact stands out that the promises of theology are no longer equal to the promises of the soul: the human ideal has soared successively above the Valhalla of Odin, the heights of Olympus, the rosy cloud with cherubs and trumpets, --far above them all. The old heavens surround us now, only as the signs of the zodiac, dead because smitten by the light of a larger hope. And yet we feel that in each of those forms the best that is in us once lodged. The progressive life made each for its mansion, unmade it when it became a prison. No mere part can hold him who aspires to the whole. But this, you may say, is to set us moving on a vicious circle. Warning you by all the extinct heavens, whether painted on the ether by poets, or planned on earth by visionaries, that you can never grasp the ideal, I still tell you man is born to seek it. It is even so. It is a melody no heart can live without, though so often as we listen, we must say, Thou tellest me of things that in all my life I have not known and shall not know! For yet every chord of our being may vibrate in response to it, and the whole life may be harmonised by the endeavours after the fuller expression, to which we are drawn by every intimation of a higher thought, or happier character, or nobler aim. The better we may reach, though not the best; but no one ever...