THE UNION OF PIETY AND VIRTUE. 537 



that he cannot be defined by us. God is so great 

 that he does not deign to have personal relations with 

 us human atoms that are called men. Those who desire 

 to worship their Creator must worship him through 

 mankind. Such it is plain is the scheme of Nature. 

 We are placed under secondary laws, and these we 

 must obey. To develope to the utmost our genius 

 and our love, that is the only true religion. To do 

 that which deserves to be written, to write that which 

 deserves to be read, to tend the sick, to comfort the 

 sorrowful, to animate the weary, to keep the temple of 

 the body pure, to cherish the divinity within us, to be 

 faithful to the intellect, to educate those powers 

 which have been entrusted to our charge and to em- 

 ploy them in the service of humanity, that is all that 

 we can do. Then our elements shall be dispersed 

 and all is at an end. All is at an end for the unit, 

 all is at an end for the atom, all is at an end for 

 the speck of flesh and blood with the little spark of 

 instinct which it calls its mind, but all is not at 

 an end for the actual Man, the true Being, the 

 glorious One. We teach that the soul is immortal ; 

 we teach that there is a future life ; we teach 

 that there is a Heaven in the ages far away ; but 

 not for us single corpuscules, not for us dots of ani- 

 mated jelly, but for the One of whom we are the 

 elements, and who, though we perish, never dies, but 

 grows from period to period and by the united efforts 

 of single molecules called men, or of those cell-groups 

 called nations is raised towards the Divine power which 

 he will finally attain. Our religion therefore is Virtue, 

 our Hope is placed in the happiness of our posterity ; 

 our Faith is the Perfectibility of Man. A day will 

 come when the European God of the nineteenth cen- 



