No Religion Can Long Continue

You Do Not Build Your Own Houses, Nor Make Your Own Garments, Nor Bake Your Own Bread, Simply Because You Know That If You Were To Attempt All These Things They Would All Be More Or Less Ill Done.

By What Sort Of Experience Are We Led To The Conviction That Spirit Exists? On The Whole, By Searching, Painful Experience. The Rose Religion Grows On A Thorn-bush, And We Must Not Be Afraid To Have Our Fingers Lacerated By The Thorns If We Would Pluck The Rose.

We Should Seek To Free The Moral Life From The Embarrassments And Entanglements In Which It Has Been Involved By The Quibbles Of The Schools And The Mutual Antagonisms Of The Sects; To Introduce Into It An Element Of Downrightness And Practical Earnestness; Above All, To Secure To The Modern World, In Its Struggle With Manifold Evil, The Boon Of Moral Unity, Despite Intellectual Diversity.

It Is Written That The Last Enemy To Be Vanquished Is Death. We Should Begin Early In Life To Vanquish This Enemy By Obliterating Every Trace Of The Fear Of Death From Our Minds. Then Can We Turn To Life And Fill The Whole Horizon Of Our Souls With It, Turn With Added Zest To All The Serious Tasks Which It Imposes And To The Pure Delights Which Here And There It Affords.

Act So As To Elicit The Best In Others And Thereby In Thyself.