With many people, religion is merely a matter of words. So far as words go we do what we think right. But the words rarely lead to action, thought, and conduct, or to purity, goodness, and honesty. There is too much playing at religion, and too little of enthusiastic, hard work.
You have no security for a man who has no religious principle.
There are men who stalk about the world gloomy and stiff and severe—self-righteous embodiments of the mischievous heresy that the religion of peace and good-will to all mankind—the religion of love and hope and joy, the religion that bathes the universal human soul in the light of paternal love, and opens to mankind the gates of immortality—is a religion of terror—men guilty of misrepresenting Christ to the world, and doing incalculable damage to His cause.
Men will wrangle for religion; write for it; fight for it; die for it; any thing but—live for it.
Too much is said in these days about the æsthetics of religion and its sensibilities. Religion's home is in the conscience. Its watchword is the word "ought." Its highest joy is in doing God's will.
They who seek religion for culture's sake are æsthetic, not religious, and will never gain that grace which religion adds to culture, because they never can have the religion.
