The three aspects of the central Unity--God as Creator, as the Ideal of Humanity, as the Inspirer of it--is a very subtle and advanced idea; yet it is maintained that symbols should be taught first, before they are understood, so that gradually the growing mind should come to realize and appropriate what it already knows.
"This is a very sophistical and ingenious defence.

But it seems to break down in practice.

How many people reject the idea when realized, simply, as I hold, on account of the grotesque and fantastic conceptions that the immature and overstrained mind collected about it--conceptions which no amount of _reason_ is later able to overcome! And how many never grow to realize it at all! Besides, even of those who do, it is admitted that almost all need a reconstruction _some time_, a breaking-up of what would otherwise be crystallized formulae, a _conversion_, in fact.

Have you ever seen a high nature grow up from boyhood to manhood in undisturbed possession of a vital faith?
I confess that I never have! "I can not help feeling a dismal possibility, that future students of religion, looking over a nineteenth century 'child's catechism,' will laugh, or rather drop their hands in blind amazement--for in truth it is no laughing matter--at the metaphysical conglomerate of dogma, driven like a nail into the heads of careless and innocent children (such, at least, as have had, like myself, the advantage of a religious bringing-up), just as we turn over with regretful amusement and pathetic wonder the doctrinal farrago of a Buddhist or a Hindu.
"And all this because people can't wait.

He must have a 'dogmatic basis,' they say, the sinew and bone of religion, when the poor child's head can not even take in their ideas, let alone his emotion appreciate them.
"The consequence is, that I can't bring myself to use these words except in societies where I know I shall not be misunderstood.
"Influence, the indestructibility of matter, aspiration--those are what Grace, the Resurrection of the Body, the Holy Spirit mean to me now; great and living and integral parts of my creed, which I not only glow to reflect about, but which surround and penetrate my life daily and hourly with ever-increasing thankfulness.
"Yet, on the other hand, some people depend so much on tradition: they never have a reconstruction of ideas; memories and associations are all in all to them.