THE DECADENCE OF THEOLOaT 119 



Magnitude, perspective, order, system, connection, is 

 what the light of science reveals to us. How much 

 sentiment, how much poetry and religion we can read 

 in these things depends upon us. The nearness, the 

 privacy, the fireside charm, and the dark-closet fear 

 of nature are gone ; in short, its purpose, its affection 

 or hatred, as directed to you and me. The universe 

 is going its own way with no thought of us ; to 

 keep in its currents is our life, to cross them is our 

 death. This discovery sends the cosmic chill, with 

 which so many of us are familiar in these days ; it 

 makes the religious mind gasp for breath, but we 

 must face it, and still find life sweet under its influ- 

 ence. The world is not yet used to the open air of 

 this thought — the great out of doors of it ; we are 

 not hardened to it. We have been so long housed 

 in our comfortable little anthropomorphic creeds, 

 with their artificial warmth and light, that when we 

 are suddenly turned out of doors by this thought, 

 we experience, I say, the cosmic chill. It is quite 

 probable that future generations, with a more robust 

 religious sense than ours, will have quite a different 

 feeling in the presence of this discovery. 



Behold, what a chill, or series of chills, the reli- 

 gious mind has aU along felt under the influence of 

 the revelations of science, medicine, geology, astro- 

 nomy ! All have convulsed the religious mind. 

 Evolution set the teeth of both priests and laymen 

 chattering, and many of them are chattering stUl. 

 Those who have been acclimated to the thought find 

 new inspiration in it ; their religious sense is more 



