The Papacy; Its History, Dogmas, Genius, and Prospects - Being the Evangelical Alliance First Prize Essay on Popery #229569

The new ideas had a painful conflict to maintain with the Old. The world had taken a mighty step in advance. It had accomplished a transition from the symbolic to the spi ritual, — from the fables, allegories, and myths, which a false philosophy and a sensuous poetry had invented to amuse its infancy, to the clear, definite, and Spiritual ideas which Christianity had provided for the exercise of its manhood. But it seemed as if the transition was too great. There was a felt inability in the human mind, as yet, to look with Open face upon truth; and men were fain to interpose the I veil of symbol between themselves and the glory of that Majestic Form. It was seen that the world could not pass by a single step from infancy to manhood, — that the Creator had imposed certain laws upon the growth of the species, as.