This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1921 Excerpt: ... WOMAN AND BELIGION MM mam HE religious instinct is one of the finest elements in human nature. How it arose, how it became implanted, and why it has persisted in our souls need not detain us, even if we knew. There it is We have no choice other than to make the best of it. The longing to live again may spring from our shortened cycle of life, which is cut down by the indiscretions of ignorance. Nevertheless it is a worthy longing which, when reasonably indulged, need work no hardship on our lives, physically, morally, nor intellectually. The longing to do right in this world, to live in harmony with the great moral forces of the universe, to express our gratitude to the intellectual-ethical source, which the world believes to exist and which it calls God, for short, is not an unworthy longing. We may regard it, if we please, as a childish emotion of a young race. If it is a mere childish longing, we shall grow out of it in time; but meanwhile it will serve us well as spiritual beings thrilled with aspirations. The hope to live again, to be able to repair the mistakes of our short lives; the hope for mercy to the maltreated, justice to the defrauded; the hope that those who have been mauled in this world may find sympathetic treatment in another; the hope to embrace again the loved and lost, to unite the threads of consciousness severed by death, to efface the memory of dead sorrow with living joy, is an estimable hope, however irrational it may seem to some. It is no crime to believe that the fountainhead of morality is moral; that the source of intellectuality is intellectual; that the mother of emotions is emotive; that the principles of beauty are, in some inscrutable manner, born of supreme design; that the good within us comes from God. Neither is it...