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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