HARMONIES OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 227 



And, If the supernatural were omitted from our present creeds, tlie 

 residuum would not be classical paganism. It would be something 

 like what paganism would have been if religious feeling had not been 

 weakened by the growing complication of human life. Had men's 

 minds continued as religious in the age of Aristotle as they were in 

 the days of Homer, it is not difficult to see how paganism would have 

 developed. The great product of civilization is the development in 

 men's minds of the feeling of justice, duty, and self-sacrifice. These 

 new feelings, then, would have embodied themselves in new deities, 

 or new conceptions of old ones. Paganism in develoj^ing would have 

 become moral, and so would have lost all the charm which the mod- 

 erns, tired, of morality, find in it. And in doing so it would not 

 necessarily have given more weight to the supernatural, and might 

 easily have given less. Notions of duty and morality have no neces- 

 sary connection with the supernatural. The worship of God in Na- 

 ture, therefore, the worship of the Being revealed to us by science, 

 would not be a religion without morality, because, however science 

 may repudiate the supernatural, it cannot repudiate the law of duty. 

 To human beings that have reached a certain social stage, duty is a 

 thing quite as real as the sun and stars, and exciting much deeper 

 feelings. In the sense in which we are using the word, duty is a part 

 of Nature. The worship of Nature, tlierefore, would be no pagan- 

 ism. It would not be mere animal happiness or aesthetic enjoyment 

 of beauty. It would be far more like Christianity. It would be 

 mainly concerned with questions of right and wrong ; it would be in 

 almost as much danger as Christianity of running into excesses of 

 introspection and asceticism. 



But, now that we are on our guard against this misconcejstion, let 

 us go somewhat further back to inquire what the religion of God in 

 Natui'e will be. The word religion is commonly and conveniently 

 appropriated to the feelings with which we regard God. But those 

 feelings love, awe, admiration, wliich together make up religion are 

 felt in various combinations for human beings, aiid even for inanimate 

 objects. It is not exclusively but only ^x^r excellence that religion is 

 directed toward God. When feelings of admiration are very strong, 

 they find vent in some act ; w^hen they are strong and at the same 

 time serious and permanent, they express themselves in recurring 

 acts, and hence arise ritual and liturgy, and whatever the multitude 

 identifies with religion. But, without ritual, religion may exist in its 

 elementary state, and this elementary state of religion is what may 

 be described as habitual and permanent admiration. 



Keligious feeling readily connects itself with the supernatural 

 " Gern wohnt er unter Feen, Talismanen " ' but, at the same time, 

 religious feeling can restrain itself, and sometimes even deliljcrately 

 chooses to restrain itself from all associations of the kind. Accord- 



' Loves to dwell amid fairies and talismans. 



