RELIGION.
"For what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God."—MICAH.
"Pure religion and undefiled is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world."—JAMES I.
"The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life."
2 CORINTHIANS.
CHAPTER XI.
RELIGION.
It would be quite out of place here to enter into any discussion of theological problems or to advocate any particular doctrines. Nevertheless I could not omit what is to most so great a comfort and support in sorrow and suffering, and a source of the purest happiness.
We commonly, however, bring together under this term two things which are yet very different: the religion of the heart, and that of the head. The first deals with conduct, and the duties of Man; the second with the nature of the supernatural and the future of the soul, being in fact a branch of knowledge.
Religion should be a strength, guide, and comfort, not a source of intellectual anxiety or angry argument. To persecute for religion's sake implies belief in a jealous, cruel, and unjust Deity. If we have done our best to arrive at the truth, to torment oneself about the result is to doubt the goodness of God, and, in the words of Bacon, "to bring down the Holy Ghost, instead of the likeness of a dove, in the shape of a raven." "The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life," and the first duty of religion is to form the highest possible conception of God.