But there is danger that it may
resist the pressure too long and break suddenly, wrenching
even the granite quays from their foundations, bringing
desolation to a vast population, and leaving, after the
subsidence of the flood, a widespread residue of slime, a
fertile breeding-bed for the germs of disease.
But the patient _mujiks_ are doing the right thing. The
barrier, exposed more and more to the warmth of spring
by the scores of channels they are making, will break away
gradually, and the river will flow on beneficent and beautiful.
My work in this book is like that of the Russian _mujik_
on the Neva. I simply try to aid in letting the light of
historical truth into that decaying mass of outworn thought
which attaches the modern world to mediaeval conceptions
of Christianity, and which still lingers among us--a most
serious barrier to religion and morals, and a menace to the
whole normal evolution of society.
For behind this barrier also the flood is rapidly rising
--the flood of increased knowledge and new thought; and
this barrier also, though honeycombed and in many places
thin, creates a danger--danger of a sudden breaking away,
distressing and calamitous, sweeping before it not only
out worn creeds and noxious dogmas, but cherished principles
and ideals, and even wrenching out most precious religious
and moral foundations of the whole social and political fabric.
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