ACCEPTING THE UNIVERSE 



natural truth among the most truly religious of 

 men? Any of these men would have gone to hell for 

 the truth — not the truth of creeds and rituals, bu' 

 the truth as it exists in the councils of the Eternal, 

 and as it is written in the laws of matter and of life. 



For my part I had a thousand times rather have 

 Huxley's religion than that of the bishops who 

 sought to discredit him, or Bruno's than that of the 

 church that burnt him. The religion of a man that 

 has no other aim than his own personal safety from 

 some real or imaginary future calamity, is of the 

 selfish, ignoble kind. 



Amid the decay of creeds, love of nature has high 

 religious value. This has saved many persons in this 

 world — saved them from mammon-worship, and 

 from the frivolity and insincerity of the crowd. It 

 has made their lives placid and sweet. It has given 

 them an inexhaustible field for inquiry, for enjoy- 

 ment, for the exercise of all their powers, and in the 

 end has not left them soured and dissatisfied. It has 

 made them contented and at home wherever they 

 are in nature — in the house not made with hands. 

 This house is their church, and the rocks and the 

 hills are the altars, and the creed is written in the 

 leaves of the trees and in the flowers of the field and 

 in the sands of the shore. A new creed every day 

 and new preachers, and holy days all the week 

 through. Every walk to the woods is a religious rite, 

 every bath in the stream is a saving ordinance. 



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