Lydia Maria Child, Letters of Lydia Maria Child
John Greenleaf Whittier, Wendell Phillips, Harriet Winslow Sewall, Ed.

To Miss Lucy Osgood.

I wish to see Samuel Johnson's book,2 and I thank you for the offer to send it to me. I will write 11th of February in it, and put it among my birthday offerings. It is very true that a philosophic religion is fit for philosophers only, but all that each individual has to do is to follow the truth as far as he sees it, without assuming that his boundary is necessarily the end of the universe. I opine that we have nothing to do with the question whether the views that seem to us true can meet the wants of the “ignorant, silly, sensuous, suffering masses.” It is our business to seek truth reverentially, and utter it frankly, leaving it to its mission of educating “the masses” to a higher stand-point. It is never safe to look outside and calculate consequences in forming our estimate of any truths. What a muddy medley they made of Christianity by grafting upon it one superstition

1 The epizootic epidemic then prevailing in all the large cities of the United States.

2 Oriental Religions and their Relation to Universal Religion. By Samuel Johnson. Boston, 1873. [215] which was important to the Jewish converts, another to the Greek, another to the Scandinavian, and so on I The Italian peasant woman is doubtless comforted by praying to a doll dressed up in tinsel, which she worships as the “Mother of God.” I would not, if I had the power, make it illegal for her to comfort herself in that way; but shall I refrain from philosophic utterance, lest it should make her doll fall out of its shrine? The doll will not and cannot fall, so long as the “ignorant, sensual, suffering masses” have need of her. The work that needs to be done is to bring the world into such a state of order that there will be no “ignorant, sensual, suffering masses,” and consequently no further use for consecrated dolls. Meanwhile, let them comfort themselves with their dolls. It is the business of grown people to lead children gently away from the necessity for toys. It is a long time since principles were all that commanded my implicit faith and reverence. Some would say regretfully that I believed less than formerly; but in my inmost soul I know that I believe more.