TIME AND CHANGE 
reau entered it, as Bryant and Amiel entered it, and 
as all those enter it who make it a resource in their 
lives and an instrument of their culture. The forms 
and creeds of religion change, but the sentiment of 
religion —the wonder and reverence and love we feel 
in the presence of the inscrutable universe — per- 
sists. Indeed, these seem to be renewing their life 
to-day in this growing love for all natural objects 
and in this increasing tenderness toward all forms 
of life. If we do not go to church so much as did our 
fathers, we go to the woods much more, and are 
much more inclined to make a temple of them than 
they were. 
We now use the word Nature very much as our 
fathers used the word God, and, I suppose, back of 
it all we mean the power that is everywhere present 
and active, and in whose lap the visible universe is 
held and nourished. It is a power that we can see 
and touch and hear, and realize every moment of 
our lives how absolutely we are dependent upon it. 
There are no atheists or skeptics in regard to this 
power. All men see how literally we are its child- 
ren, and all men learn how swift and sure is the 
penalty of disobedience to its commands. 
Our associations with Nature vulgarize it and rob 
it of its divinity. When we come to see that the 
celestial and the terrestrial are one, that time and 
eternity are one, that mind and matter are one, that 
death and life are one, that there is and can be no- 
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