A Most Unmanly Surrender

"I am afraid there has been a most unmanly surrender of Christianity and of all that strength and honor which belong to it, that so much authority has been given to the conceptions of a narrow and ignorant bigotry as to have laid open our religion to the scorn of philosophers, and to have brought down upon her the contempt and disgust of society; that in this way she has been associated with all that is mean and with all that is ignoble and has been looked upon as such a tame vulgar and unworthy thing, as to be totally unfit for a man of eloquence and of liberal illumination; ay, and when they cast their glance upon her, and see nothing in any of her features but the plain and the coarse and the ordinary, let us not wonder though it be a glance of hard and infidel disdain.  Are we, in truckling compliance with the humors of a baseless fanaticism, to strip away all learning and cultivation and eloquence as so many unseemly appendages?" Thomas Chalmers