608 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



nary run of men ; in short, above what our author calls, boldly, athe- 

 ism. "An atheist, in the proper sense of the word," he writes, " is not 

 a man who disbelieves in the goodness of God, or in His distinctness 

 from Nature, or in His personality. These disbeliefs may be as seri- 

 ous in their way as atheism, but they are different. Atheism is a dis- 

 belief in the existence of God that is, a disbelief in any regularity in 

 the Universe to which a man must conform himself under penalties." 

 The religion of the future must combine all three worships. In the 

 individual the results will be practically equivalent to culture, in the 

 aggregate to civilization. The ideal of antiquity was one of separate 

 nationalities, with separate religions ; the ideal of the middle ages was 

 an imperial state and a catholic church. The two ideals will be com- 

 bined in the church and state of the future. The writer points out 

 very clearly the connection between the spirit of nationality and the 

 spirit of religion. The church of the future will be missionary, carry- 

 ing its faith into uncivilized Asia and Africa ; it will be undogmatic, 

 it may even be without a temple, but it will not be without worship, 

 for we have objects for this in nature on its various sides. He thus 

 takes occasion to correct a very common misconcejition with regard to 

 nature : 



" It is often said that, when you substitute Nature for God, you 

 take a thing heartless and pitiless instead of love and goodness. Un- 

 doubtedly much less of love and goodness can be discovered in Nature 

 than Christians see in God. But when it is said that there are no 

 such qualities in Nature, that Nature consists of relentless and ruth- 

 less laws, that Nature knows nothing of forgiveness, and inexorably 

 exacts the utmost penalty for every transgression, a confusion is 

 made between two different meanings which may be given to the 

 word Nature. We are concerned here with Nature as opposed to that 

 which is above Nature, not with Nature as opposed to man. We use 

 it as a name comprehending all the uniform laws of the Universe as 

 known in our experience, and excluding such laws as are inferred from 

 experiences so exceptional and isolated as to be difficult of verifica- 

 tion. In this sense Nature is not heartless or unrelenting ; to say so 

 would be equivalent to saying that pity and forgiveness are in all cases 

 supernatural. It may be true that the law of gravitation is quite piti- 

 less, that it will destroy the most innocent and amiable person with as 

 little hesitation as the wrong-doer. But there are other laws which 

 are not pitiless. There are laws under which human beings form 

 themselves into communities, and set up courts in which the claims of 

 individuals are weighed with careful skill. There are laws under 

 which churches and philanthropical societies are formed, under which 

 misery is sought out and relieved, and every evil that can be discov- 

 ered in the world is redressed. Nature, in the sense in which we are 

 now using the word, includes humanity, and therefore, so far from be- 

 ing pitiless, includes all the pity that belongs to the whole human fam- 



