On the other
hand, confronting faith, by the side of that beneficent divination
which, answering the demands of conscience and the emotions, fashions
the ideal world and makes the real world conform to this, it poses the
testing process which, analyzing the past and the present, disengages
possible laws and the probabilities of the future. Doctrine likewise
has its dogmas, many definitive and others in the way of becoming so,
and hence a full and complete conception of things, vast enough and
clear enough, in spite of what it lacks, to take in at once nature and
humanity. It, too, gathers its faithful in a great church, believers
and semi believers, who, consequently or inconsequently, accept its
authority in whole or in part, listen to its preachers, revere its
doctors, and deferentially await the decisions of its councils. Wide-
spread, still uncertain and lax under a wavering hierarchy, the new
Church, for a hundred years past, is steadily in the way of
consolidation, of progressive ascendancy and of indefinite extension.
Its conquests are constantly increasing; sooner or later, it will be
the first of social powers.
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