brighter to-morrow? At
best it is but a froward child, that must be played with and humored,
to keep it quiet till it falls asleep, and then the care is over."[13]

[13] Op. cit., pp. 314, 313.

This is a complex, a tender, a submissive, and a graceful state of
mind. For myself, I should have no objection to calling it on the
whole a religious state of mind, although I dare say that to many of
you it may seem too listless and half-hearted to merit so good a name.
But what matters it in the end whether we call such a state of mind
religious or not? It is too insignificant for our instruction in any
case; and its very possessor wrote it down in terms which he would not
have used unless he had been thinking of more energetically religious
moods in others, with which he found himself unable to compete. It is
with these more energetic states that our sole business lies, and we
can perfectly well afford to let the minor notes and the uncertain
border go. It was the extremer cases that I had in mind a little while
ago when I said that personal religion, even without theology or
ritual, would prove to embody some elements that morality pure and
simple does not contain. You may remember that I promised shortly to
point out what those elements were. In a general way I can now say
what I had in mind.

"I accept the universe" is reported to have been a favorite utterance
of our New England transcendentalist, Margaret Fuller; and when some
one repeated this phrase to Thomas Carlyle, his sardonic comment is
said to have been: "Gad! she'd better!" At bottom the whole concern
of both morality and religion is with the manner of our acceptance of
the universe. Do we accept it only in part and grudgingly, or heartily
and altogether? Shall our protests against certain things in it be
radical and unforgiving, or shall we think that, even with evil, there
are ways of living that must lead to good? If we accept the whole,
shall we do so as if stunned into submission--as Carlyle would have
us--"Gad! we'd better!"--or shall we do so with enthusiastic assent?
Morality pure and simple accepts the law of the whole which it finds
reigning, so far as to acknowledge and obey it, but it may obey it with
the heaviest and coldest heart, and never cease to feel it as a yoke.
But for religion, in its strong and fully developed manifestations, the
service of the highest never is felt as a yoke. Dull submission is
left far behind, and a