solar system--it has been formed by Law, The
sun--the driving force of Law has made it. Our earth--Law has shaped
that; brought Life out of it; evolved Life on it from the lowest to the
highest; lifted primeval Man to modern Man; out of barbarism developed
civilization; out of prehistoric religions, historic religions. And
this one order--method--purpose--ever running and unfolding through the
universe, is all that we know of Him whom we call Creator, God, our
Father. So that His reign is the Reign of Law. He, Himself, is the
author of the Law that we should seek Him. We obey, and our seekings
are our religions."

"If you ask me whether I believe in the God of the Hebrews, I say
'Yes'; just as I believe in the God of the Babylonians, of the
Egyptians, of the Greeks, of the Romans, of all men. But if you ask
whether I believe what the Hebrews wrote of God, or what any other age
or people thought of God, I say 'No.' I believe what the best thought
of my own age thinks of Him in the light of man's whole past and of our
greater present knowledge of the Laws of His universe," said David,
stoutly, speaking for his masters.

"As for the theologies," he resumed hastily, as if not wishing to be
interrupted, "I know of no book that has undertaken to number them.
They, too, are part of Man's nature and civilization, of his never
ceasing search. But they are merely what he thinks of God--never
anything more. They often contain the highest thought of which he is
capable in his time and place; but the awful mistake and cruelty of
them is that they have regularly been put forth as the voice of God
Himself, authoritative, inviolable, and unchanging. An assemblage of
men have a perfect right to turn a man out of their church on
theological grounds; but they have no right to do it in the name of
God. With as much propriety a man might be expelled from a political
party in the name of God. In the long life of any one of the great
religions of the globe, how many brief theologies have grown up under
it like annual plants under a tree! How many has the Christian religion
itself sprouted, nourished, and trampled down as dead weeds! What do we
think now of the Christian theology of the tenth century? of the
twelfth? of the fifteenth? In the nineteenth century alone, how many
systems of theology have there been? In the Protestantism of the United
States, how many are there to-day? Think of the names they bear--older
and newer! According to f