It is very possible that a
hundred or five hundred years from now the forms of religious belief may
be so altered that we should hardly know them. But the sense of
dependence on Divine influence and the need of communion with the unseen
and eternal will be then just what they are now. It is not the
geologist's hammer, or the astronomer's telescope, or the naturalist's
microscope, that is going to take away the need of the human soul for
that Rock to rest upon which is higher than itself, that Star which never
sets, that all-pervading Presence which gives life to all the least
moving atoms of the immeasurable universe.
I have no fears for myself, and listen very quietly to all your debates.
I go from your philosophical discussions to the reading of Jeremy
Taylor's "Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying" without feeling that I have
unfitted myself in the least degree for its solemn reflections. And, as
I have mentioned his name, I cannot help saying that I do not believe
that good man himself would have ever shown the bitterness to those who
seem to be at variance with the received doctrines which one may see in
some of the newspapers that call themselves "religious.
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