always care to
follow out a train of thought until it ends in a blind cul de sac, as
some of what are called the logical people are fond of doing.

Now I want to remind you that religion is not a matter of intellectual
luxury to those of us who are interested in it, but something very
different. It is our life, and more than our life; for that is measured
by pulse-beats, but our religious consciousness partakes of the Infinite,
towards which it is constantly yearning. 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." I have kept a
few old books from my honored father's library, and among them is another
of his which I always thought had more true Christianity in its title
than there is in a good many whole volumes. I am going to take the book
down, or up,--for it is not a little one,--and write out the title,
which, I dare say, you remember, and very likely you have the book.
"Discourse of the Liberty of Prophesying, showing the Unreasonableness of
prescribing to other Men's Faith, and the Iniquity of persecuting
Different Opinions."

Now, my dear sir, I am sure you believe that I want to be liberal and
reasonable, and not to act like those weak alarmists who, whenever the
silly sheep begin to skip as if something was after them, and huddle
together in their fright, are sure there must be a bear or a l