at the thing, which later they are to do well. Play
is preparation. The man of imagination is the man of sympathy, and only
such are those who benefit and bless mankind and help us on our way.

John Fiske had imagination enough to follow closely and hold fellowship
with the greatest minds the world has ever known. John Fiske believed
that we live in a natural universe, and that God works through Nature,
and that, in fact, Nature is the spirit of God at work.

Doubts never disturbed John Fiske. Things that were not true technically
and literally were true to him if taken in a spiritual or poetic way.
God, to him, was a personal being, creating through the Law of Evolution
because He chose to. The six days of Creation were six eons or
geological periods.

No man has ever been more in sympathy with the discoverers in Natural
History than John Fiske. No man ever knew so much about his work as John
Fiske. His knowledge was colossal, his memory prodigious. And in all of
the realm of science and philosophy, from microscopy and the germ
theory to advanced astronomy and the birth of worlds, his glowing
imagination saw the work of a beneficent Creator who stood above and
beyond and outside of Natural Law, and with Infinite Wisdom and Power
did His own Divine Will.

Little theologians who feared Science, on account of danger to pet
texts, received from him kindly pats on the head, as he showed them how
both Science and Scripture were true.

He didn't do away with texts, he merely changed their interpretation.
And often he discovered that the text which seemed to contradict science
was really prophetic of it. John Fiske did not take anything away from
anybody, unless he gave them something better in return.

"A man's belief is a part of the man," he said. "Take it away by force
and he will bleed to death; but if the time comes when he no longer
needs it, he will either slough it or convert it into something more
useful."

Every good thing begins as something else. Evolution is at work on the
creeds as well as in matter. A monkey-man will have a monkey belief.

He evolves the thing he needs, and the belief that fits one man will not
fit another. Religious opinions are never thrown away: they evolve into
something else, and we use the old symbols and imagery to express new
thoughts.

John Fiske, unlike John Morley, considered "Compromise" a great thing.
"Truth is a point of view: let us get together," he used to say. And so