What Is Called Virtue In The Common

Sacrifice Is The First Element Of Religion, And Resolves Itself In Theological Language Into The Love Of God.

We Read The Past By The Light Of The Present, And The Forms Vary As The Shadows Fall, Or As The Point Of Vision Alters.

Do You Not Think That Sometimes When Matters Are At The Worst With Us, When We Appear To Have Done All Which We Ourselves Can Do, Yet All Has Been Unavailing, And We Have Only Shown We Cannot, Not We Will Not, Help Ourselves; That Often Just Then Something Comes, Almost As If Supernaturally, To Settle For Us, As If Our Guardian Angel Took Pity On Our Perplexities, And Then At Last Obtained Leave To Help Us? And If It Be So, Then What Might Only Be A Coincidence Becomes A Call Of Providence, A Voice From Heaven, A Command.

There Are At Bottom But Two Possible Religions--that Which Rises In The Moral Nature Of Man, And Which Takes Shape In Moral Commandments, And That Which Grows Out Of The Observation Of The Material Energies Which Operate In The External Universe.

The Soul Of Man Is Not A Thing Which Comes And Goes, Is Builded And Decays Like The Elemental Frame In Which It Is Set To Dwell, But A Very Living Force, A Very Energy Of God's Organic Will, Which Rules And Moulds This Universe.