ACCEPTING THE UNIVERSE 



to resolve things into their component parts and 

 recombine them to serve his own purposes. He gets 

 water power, steam power, electric power, by sepa- 

 rating a part from the whole and placing his ma- 

 chinery where they tend to unite again. 



Science tends more and more to reveal to us the 

 unity that underlies the diversity of nature. We 

 must have diversity in our practical lives ; we must 

 seize Nature by many handles. But our intellectual 

 lives demand unity, demand simplicity amid all 

 this complexity. Our religious lives demand the 

 same. Amid all the diversity of creeds and sects we 

 are coming more and more to see that religion is 

 one, that verbal differences and ceremonies are 

 unimportant, and that the fundamental agreements 

 are alone significant. Religion as a key or passport 

 to some other world has had its day; as a mere set 

 of statements or dogmas about the Infinite mystery 

 it has had its day. Science makes us more and more 

 at home in this world, and is coming more and more, 

 to the intuitional mind, to have a religious value. 

 Science kills credulity and superstition, but to the 

 well-balanced mind it enhances the feeling of won- 

 der, of veneration, and of kinship which we feel in 

 the presence of the marvelous universe. It quiets 

 our fears and apprehensions, it pours oil upon the 

 troubled waters of our lives, and reconciles us to the 

 world as it is. The old fickle and jealous gods be- 

 gotten by our fears and morbid consciences fall 



108 



