II 



RELIGION 



MY readers sometimes write me and complain 

 that there is too much Nature in my books 

 and not enough God, which seems to me like com- 

 plaining that there is too much about the daylight 

 and not enough about the sun. What, then, is 

 Nature? Whence its source? Why are we Nature- 

 lovers? 



Of course the above criticism springs from the 

 old conception which has been so long drilled into 

 us, namely, that there are two Nature and God 

 and that they are often at strife as Tennyson 

 hints when he asks, "Are God and Nature then at 

 strife?" 



I look upon Nature not merely as the garment of 

 God, but as his living integument. With a manlike 

 God, the maker and ruler of the universe, and ex- 

 isting apart from it, I can do nothing. 



When I write about Nature and make much of 

 her beauties and wonders, I am writing about God. 

 The Nature-lover is the God-lover. I am chary 

 about using the term "God" because of its theo- 

 logical and other disturbing associations. There is 

 something too austere and forbidding, and even 

 terrible, in the conception it calls up. But call it 

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