LITTLE 

 JOURNEYS 



and he will bleed to death ; but if the time comes that 

 he no longer needs it, he will either slough it, or con- 

 vert it into something more useful. ' 

 Every good thing begins as something else. Evolution 

 is at work on the creeds as well as in matter. A 

 monkey-man will have a monkey belief. He evolves 

 the thing he needs, and the belief that fits one man 

 will not another. Religious opinions are never thrown 

 away they evolve into something else, and we use 

 the old symbols and imagery to express new thoughts. 

 QJohn Fiske, unlike John Morley, considered "Com- 

 promise " a great thing. "Truth is a point of view 

 let us get together, " he used to say. And so he worked 

 to keep the old, as a foundation for the new. 

 I once heard him interrupted in a lecture by a ques- 

 tioner who asked, " Why would you keep the Church 

 intact?' The question stung him into impassioned 

 speech which was better than anything in his manu- 

 script. I cannot attempt to reproduce his exact lan- 

 guage, but the intent was that as the Church was the 

 chief instrument in preserving for us the learning ot 

 Greece and Rome, so has she been the mother of art, 

 the inspirer of music and the protector of the outcast. 

 Colleges, hospitals, libraries, asylums, art galleries, 

 all come to us through the medium of religion. The 

 convent was first a place of protection for oppressed 

 womanhood. 



To discard religion would be like repudiating our 

 parents because we did not like their manners and 

 clothes. The religious impulse is the art impulse, and 

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