THE FAITH OF A NATURALIST 



Communion service is at all hours, and the bread 

 and wine are from the heart and marrow of Mother 

 Earth. There are no heretics in Nature's church; all 

 are believers, all are communicants. The beauty of 

 natural religion is that you have it all the time; you 

 do not have to seek it afar off in myths and legends, 

 in catacombs, in garbled texts, in miracles of dead 

 saints or wine-bibbing friars. It is of to-day; it is 

 now and here; it is everywhere. The crickets chirp it, 

 the birds sing it, the breezes chant it, the thunder 

 proclaims it, the streams murmur it, the unaffected 

 man lives it. Its incense rises from the plowed 

 fields, it is on the morning breeze, it is in the forest 

 breath and in the spray of the wave. The frosts 

 write it in exquisite characters, the dews impearl it, 

 and the rainbow paints it on the cloud. It is not an 

 insurance policy underwritten by a bishop or a 

 priest; it is not even a faith; it is a love, an enthusi- 

 asm, a consecration to natural truth. 



The God of sunshine and of storms speaks a less 

 equivocal language than the God of revelation. 



Our fathers had their religion and their fathers 

 had theirs, but they were not ours, and could not be 

 in those days and under those conditions. But their 

 religions lifted them above themselves; they healed 

 their wounds; they consoled them for many of the 

 failures and disappointments of this world; they de- 

 veloped character; they tempered the steel in their 

 nature. How childish to us seems the plan of salva- 



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