printed. But to come more closely to the point. Our main object was
to create in our hearers contentment with their lot; and even some
joy in it. That was our religion; that was the central thought of
all we said and did, giving shape and tendency to everything. We
admitted nothing which did not help us in that direction, and
everything which did help us. Our attempts, to any one who had not
the key, may have seemed vague and desultory. We might by a stranger
have been accused of feeble wandering, of idle dabbling, now in this
subject and now in that, but after a while he would have found that
though we were weak creatures, with no pretence to special knowledge
in any subject, we at least knew what we meant, and tried to
accomplish it. For my own part, I was happy when I had struck that
path. I felt as if somehow, after many errors, I had once more
gained a road, a religion in fact, and one which essentially was not
new but old, the religion of the Reconciliation, the reconciliation
of man with God; differing from the current creed in so far as I did
not lay stress upon sin as the cause of estrangement, but yet
agreeing with it in making it my duty of duties to suppress revolt,
and to submit calmly and sometimes cheerfully to the Creator. This
surely, under a thousand disguises, has been the meaning of all the
forms of worship which we have seen in the world. Pain and death are
nothing new, and men have been driven into perplexed scepticism, and
even insurrection by them, ever since men came into being. Always,
however, have the majority, the vast majority of the race, felt
instinctively that in this scepticism and insurrection they could not
abide, and they have struggled more or less blindly after
explanation; determined not to desist till they had found it, and
reaching a result embodied in a multitude of shapes irrational and
absurd to the superficial scoffer, but of profound interest to the
thoughtful. I may observe, in passing, that this is a reason why all