the submission
of a free conscience, and uses no compulsion but that imposed by its own
inherent dignity. Science gives warnings, and if you are capable of
understanding scientific argument, you will be incapable of disbelieving
the warnings. Certain things will poison you; certain neglects will ruin
your health; disregard of scientific construction will bring your roof
down on your head; to enter a burning building will risk your life; some
of these things you may learn by ordinary experience, some of them by
that combination of experience which is called Science. But if you are
capable of the necessary reasoning you cannot doubt, however much you
may wish to do so. And yet to defy these warnings and take the
inevitable consequences of that defiance may be your highest glory.
Religion also gives warnings; it assures you that the Eternal Moral Law
is supreme; that, sooner or later, those who disobey will find their
disobedience is exactly and justly punished; that no appearance to the
contrary presented by experience can be trusted. But Religion will not
compel you to believe any more than Science will compel you to obey.
Disbelieve if you choose and Religion will do nothing but perpetually
repeat its warnings and add that your disbelief has lowered you in the
scale of being. So too Science gives promises; it promises, to the race
rather than to the individual, life on easier conditions, and of greater
length; fewer pains, fewer diseases; perpetually increasing comforts;
perpetually increasing power over nature. And Science is sure to keep
the promises. And yet we may refuse to accept the promises, and it is
conceivable that the refusal may be far nobler than the acceptance. And
Religion promises also. It promises stainless purity in the soul; and
truth and justice and unfailing love; and tenderness to every creature
that can feel; and a government of all that is under our dominion with a
single eye to the service of God. And we may refuse to believe these
promises or to care whether they are kept or not. But the refusal or
pursuit of such aims as these determines our position in the judgment of
the Supreme and in the court of our own conscience.

God has made man in His own image: that is, He has given man power to
understand His works and to acknowledge Himself. And it is in
acknowledging God that man finds himself divine. He is a partaker of the
divine nature in proportion as he recognises the Supreme Law and makes