"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
mood of welcome, which may fill any place on the scale between
cheerful serenity and enthusiastic gladness, has taken its place.

It makes a tremendous emotional and practical difference to one
whether one accept the universe in the drab discolored way of
stoic resignation to necessity, or with the passionate happiness
of Christian saints. The difference is as great as that between
passivity and activity, as that between the defensive and the
aggressive mood. Gradual as are the steps by which an individual
may grow from one state into the other, many as are the
intermediate stages which different individuals represent, yet