Man needs churches, then, or societies of those interested in the
higher life of the time, needs services, needs all these things that
kindle and train and develop and lift him up out of the animal into the
spiritual and divine nature which is in every one of us. So that none
of the worships, none of the religious forms of the world that are of
any value, are ever going to be cast aside or left behind.

But there is one very important point that I must deal with for just a
little while. I will be as brief as I can.

I have been very much surprised to note certain things that have come
out in the recent religious discussions. The editor of the Brooklyn
Eagle, for example, has deprecated all talk in regard to matters of
this sort, saying, in effect: What difference does it make? What is
involved that is of any importance? Why not let everybody worship and
believe as he pleases? A writer in the New York Times? I think perhaps
more than one, but one specially I have in mind has said substantially
the same thing. It does not make any difference. Let people worship as
they please, let them believe as they please, let them go their own
way. What difference does it make?

Friends, it makes no difference at all, provided there is no such thing
in the world as religious truth. If there is, it makes all difference.
Let us take this "Don't care" and "No matter" theory for a moment, and
in the light of it consider a few of the grandest lives of the world.

If it makes no difference what a man believes in religion or how he
worships or what he tries to do, how does it happen that we Unitarians,
for example, glorify Theodore Parker, and count him a great moral and