Through Nature To God - free ebook by John Fiske

Read as playlist

Through Nature To God

John Fiske

51 chapters

3 hour read

Read as playlist

Selected Chapters

51 chapters

THROUGH NATURE TO GOD

THROUGH NATURE TO GOD

BY JOHN FISKE Victor Hugo BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY The Riverside Press, Cambridge 1900 COPYRIGHT, 1899, BY JOHN FISKE ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TO THE BELOVED AND REVERED MEMORY OF MY FRIEND THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY THIS BOOK IS CONSECRATED ...

27 minute read

Read Chapter

PREFACE

PREFACE

A single purpose runs throughout this little book, though different aspects of it are treated in the three several parts. The first part, "The Mystery of Evil," written soon after "The Idea of God," was designed to supply some considerations which for the sake of conciseness had been omitted from that book. Its close kinship with the second part, "The Cosmic Roots of Love and Self-Sacrifice," will be at once apparent to the reader. That second part is, with a few slight changes, the Phi Beta Kap

6 minute read

Read Chapter

I The Serpent's Promise to the Woman

I The Serpent's Promise to the Woman

"Your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." Genesis iii. 5. T T he legend in which the serpent is represented as giving this counsel to the mother of mankind occurs at the beginning of the Pentateuch in the form which that collection of writings assumed after the return of the Jews from the captivity at Babylon, and there is good reason for believing that it was first placed there at that time. Allusions to Eden in the Old Testament literature are extremely scarc

4 minute read

Read Chapter

II The Pilgrim's Burden

II The Pilgrim's Burden

B B ut before I can properly elucidate this view, and make clear what is meant by connecting the loss of innocence with the beginning of the Rise of Man, it is necessary to bestow a few words upon a well-worn theme, and recall to mind the helpless and hopeless bewilderment into which all theologies and all philosophies have been thrown by the problem of the existence of evil. From the ancient Greek and Hebrew thinkers who were saddened by the spectacle of wickedness insolent and unpunished, down

4 minute read

Read Chapter

III Manichæism and Calvinism

III Manichæism and Calvinism

I I t is but a step from this to the complicated personifications of Gnosticism, with its Demiurgus, or inferior spirit that created the world. By some of the Gnostics the Creator was held to be merely an inferior emanation from God, a notion which had a powerful indirect effect upon the shaping of Christian doctrine in the second and third centuries of our era. A similar thought appears in the mournful question asked by Tennyson's Arthur:— But some Gnostics went so far as to hold that the world

5 minute read

Read Chapter

IV The Dramatic Unity of Nature

IV The Dramatic Unity of Nature

N N ow in these strong assertions it seems to me that the Calvinist is much more nearly in accord with our modern knowledge than are Plato and Mill. It is not wise to hazard statements as to what the future may bring forth, but I do not see how the dualism implied in all these attempts to refer good and evil to different creative sources can ever be seriously maintained again. The advance of modern science carries us irresistibly to what some German philosophers call monism, but I prefer to call

3 minute read

Read Chapter

V What Conscious Life is made of

V What Conscious Life is made of

T T o return to our question, how could we have good without evil, we must pause for a moment and inquire into the constitution of the human mind. What we call the soul, the mind, the conscious self, is something strange and wonderful. In our ordinary efforts to conceive it, invisible and impalpable as it is, we are apt to try so strenuously to divorce it from the notion of substance that it seems ethereal, unreal, ghostlike. Yet of all realities the soul is the most solid, sound, and undeniable

4 minute read

Read Chapter

VI Without the Element of Antagonism there could be no Consciousness, and therefore no World

VI Without the Element of Antagonism there could be no Consciousness, and therefore no World

W W e may now come up out of these depths, accessible only to the plummet of psychologic analysis, and move with somewhat freer gait in the region of common and familiar experiences. It is an undeniable fact that we cannot know anything whatever except as contrasted with something else. The contrast may be bold and sharp, or it may dwindle into a slight discrimination, but it must be there. If the figures on your canvas are indistinguishable from the background, there is surely no picture to be

4 minute read

Read Chapter

VII A Word of Caution

VII A Word of Caution

B B efore we enter upon this topic a word of caution may be needed. I do not wish the purpose of the foregoing questions to be misunderstood. The serial nature of human thinking and speaking makes it impossible to express one's thought on any great subject in a solid block; one must needs give it forth in consecutive fragments, so that parts of it run the risk of being lost upon the reader or hearer, while other parts are made to assume undue proportions. Moreover, there are many minds that habi

2 minute read

Read Chapter

VIII The Hermit and the Angel

VIII The Hermit and the Angel

T T he simple-hearted monks of the Middle Ages understood, in their own quaint way, that God's methods of governing this universe are not always fit to be imitated by his finite creatures. In one of the old stories that furnished entertainment and instruction for the cloister it is said that a hermit and an angel once journeyed together. The angel was in human form and garb, but had told his companion the secret of his exalted rank and nature. Coming at nightfall to a humble house by the wayside

3 minute read

Read Chapter

IX Man's Rise from the Innocence of Brutehood

IX Man's Rise from the Innocence of Brutehood

W W e have first to note that in various ways the action of natural selection has been profoundly modified in the course of the development of mankind from a race of inferior creatures. One of the chief factors in the production of man was the change that occurred in the direction of the working of natural selection, whereby in the line of man's direct ancestry the variations in intelligence came to be seized upon, cherished, and enhanced, to the comparative neglect of variations in bodily struc

4 minute read

Read Chapter

X The Relativity of Evil

X The Relativity of Evil

A B s we survey the course of this wonderful evolution, it begins to become manifest that moral evil is simply the characteristic of the lower state of living as looked at from the higher state. Its existence is purely relative, yet it is profoundly real, and in a process of perpetual spiritual evolution its presence in some hideous form throughout a long series of upward stages is indispensable. Its absence would mean stagnation, quiescence, unprogressiveness. For the moment we exercise conscio

2 minute read

Read Chapter

I The Summer Field, and what it tells us

I The Summer Field, and what it tells us

T T here are few sights in Nature more restful to the soul than a daisied field in June. Whether it be at the dewy hour of sunrise, with blithe matin songs still echoing among the treetops, or while the luxuriant splendour of noontide fills the delicate tints of the early foliage with a pure glory of light, or in that more pensive time when long shadows are thrown eastward and the fresh breath of the sea is felt, or even under the solemn mantle of darkness, when all forms have faded from sight a

4 minute read

Read Chapter

II Seeming Wastefulness of the Cosmic Process

II Seeming Wastefulness of the Cosmic Process

B B ut as we look still further into the matter, our mood is changed once more. We find that this hideous hatred and strife, this wholesale famine and death, furnish the indispensable conditions for the evolution of higher and higher types of life. Nay more, but for the pitiless destruction of all individuals that fall short of a certain degree of fitness to the circumstances of life into which they are born, the type would inevitably degenerate, the life would become lower and meaner in kind. I

4 minute read

Read Chapter

III Caliban's Philosophy

III Caliban's Philosophy

P P olytheism easily found a place for such views as these, inasmuch as it could explain the unseemly aspects of Nature offhand by a reference to malevolent deities. With Browning's Caliban, in his meditations upon Setebos, that god whom he conceived in his own image, the recklessness of Nature is mockery engendered half in spite, half in mere wantonness. Setebos, he says, Such is the kind of philosophy that commends itself to the beastly Caliban, as he sprawls in the mire with small eft things

1 minute read

Read Chapter

IV Can it be that the Cosmic Process has no Relation to Moral Ends?

IV Can it be that the Cosmic Process has no Relation to Moral Ends?

B B ut as long as we confine our attention to the universal struggle for life and the survival of the fittest, without certain qualifications presently to be mentioned, it is difficult for the most profound intelligence to arrive at conclusions much more satisfactory than Caliban's. If the spirit shown in Nature's works as thus contemplated is not one of wanton mockery, it seems at any rate to be a spirit of stolid indifference. It indicates a Blind Force rather than a Beneficent Wisdom at the s

4 minute read

Read Chapter

V First Stages in the Genesis of Man

V First Stages in the Genesis of Man

L L et us begin by drawing a correct though slight outline sketch of what the cosmic process of evolution has been. It is not strange that when biologists speak of evolution they should often or usually have in mind simply the modifications wrought in plants and animals by means of natural selection. For it was by calling attention to such modifications that Darwin discovered a true cause of the origin of species by physiological descent from allied species. Thus was demonstrated the fact of evo

3 minute read

Read Chapter

VI The Central Fact in the Genesis of Man

VI The Central Fact in the Genesis of Man

T T his conclusion, which follows irresistibly from Wallace's theorem, that in the genesis of Humanity natural selection began to follow a new path, already throws a light of promise over our whole subject, like the rosy dawn of a June morning. But the explanation of the genesis of Humanity is still far from complete. If we compare man with any of the higher mammals, such as dogs and horses and apes, we are struck with several points of difference: first , the greater progressiveness of man, the

1 minute read

Read Chapter

VII The Chief Cause of Man's lengthened Infancy

VII The Chief Cause of Man's lengthened Infancy

t T he reason for this is that any creature's ability to perceive and to act depends upon the registration of experiences in his nerve-centres. It is either individual or ancestral experience that is thus registered; or, strictly speaking, it is both. It is of the first importance that this point should be clearly understood, and therefore a few words of elementary explanation will not be superfluous. When you learn to play the piano, you gradually establish innumerable associations between prin

5 minute read

Read Chapter

VIII Some of its Effects

VIII Some of its Effects

I I n doing this, natural selection has unlocked a door and let in a new set of causal agencies. As Homo Alalus grows in intelligence and variety of experience, his helpless babyhood becomes gradually prolonged, and passes not into sudden maturity, but into a more or less plastic intermediate period of youth. Individual experience, as contrasted with ancestral experience, counts for much more than ever before in shaping his actions, and thus he begins to become progressive. He can learn many mor

3 minute read

Read Chapter

IX Origin of Moral Ideas and Sentiments

IX Origin of Moral Ideas and Sentiments

N N ow , here at last, in encountering the ethical process at work, have we detected a breach of continuity? Has the moral sentiment been flung in from outside, or is it a natural result of the cosmic process we have been sketching? Clearly it is the latter. There has been no breach of continuity. When the prolongation of infancy produced the clan, there naturally arose reciprocal necessities of behaviour among the members of the clan, its mothers and children, its hunters and warriors. If such

5 minute read

Read Chapter

X The Cosmic Process exists purely for the Sake of Moral Ends

X The Cosmic Process exists purely for the Sake of Moral Ends

I I have not undertaken to make my outline sketch of the genesis of Humanity approach to completeness, but only to present enough salient points to make a closely connected argument in showing how morality is evolved in the cosmic process and sanctioned by it. In a more complete sketch it would be necessary to say something about the genesis of Religion. One of the most interesting, and in my opinion one of the most profoundly significant, facts in the whole process of evolution is the first ap

5 minute read

Read Chapter

XI Maternity and the Evolution of Altruism

XI Maternity and the Evolution of Altruism

F F rom an early period of the life-history of our planet, the preservation of the species had obviously become quite as imperative an end as the preservation of individuals; one is at first inclined to say more imperative, but if we pause long enough to remember that total failure to preserve individuals would be equivalent to immediate extinction of the species, we see that the one requirement is as indispensable as the other. Individuals must be preserved, and the struggle for life is between

6 minute read

Read Chapter

XII The Omnipresent Ethical Trend

XII The Omnipresent Ethical Trend

W W ith the evolution of true maternity Nature was ready to proceed to her highest grades of work. Intelligence was next to be lifted to higher levels, and the order of mammals with greatest prehensile capacities, the primates with their incipient hands, were the most favourable subjects in which to carry on this process. The later stages of the marvellous story we have already passed in review. We have seen the accumulating intelligence lengthen the period of infancy, and thus prolong the relat

3 minute read

Read Chapter

I "Deo erexit Voltaire"

I "Deo erexit Voltaire"

T T he visitor to Geneva whose studies have made him duly acquainted with the most interesting human personality of all that are associated with that historic city will never leave the place without making a pilgrimage to the chateau of Ferney. In that refined and quiet rural homestead things still remain very much as on the day when the aged Voltaire left it for the last visit to Paris, where his long life was worthily ended amid words and deeds of affectionate homage. One may sit down at the t

10 minute read

Read Chapter

II The Reign of Law, and the Greek Idea of God

II The Reign of Law, and the Greek Idea of God

T T he general effect of this intellectual movement has been to discredit more than ever before the Latin idea of God as a power outside of the course of nature and occasionally interfering with it. In all directions the process of evolution has been discovered, working after similar methods, and this has forced upon us the belief in the Unity of Nature. We are thus driven to the Greek conception of God as the power working in and through nature, without interference or infraction of law. The el

3 minute read

Read Chapter

III Weakness of Materialism

III Weakness of Materialism

J J ust here comes along the materialist and asks us some questions, tries to serve on us a kind of metaphysical writ of quo warranto . If modern physics leads us inevitably to the conception of a single infinite Power manifested in all the phenomena of the knowable Universe, by what authority do we identify that Power with the indwelling Deity as conceived by St. Athanasius? The Athanasian Deity is to some extent fashioned in Man's image; he is, to say the least, like the psychical part of ours

8 minute read

Read Chapter

IV Religion's First Postulate: the Quasi-Human God

IV Religion's First Postulate: the Quasi-Human God

I I t is with purpose that I use the word assumption . As a matter of history, the existence of a quasi-human God has always been an assumption or postulate. It is something which men have all along taken for granted. It probably never occurred to anybody to try to prove the existence of such a God until it was doubted, and doubts on that subject are very modern. Omitting from the account a few score of ingenious philosophers, it may be said that all mankind, the wisest and the simplest, have ta

3 minute read

Read Chapter

V Religions Second Postulate: the undying Human Soul

V Religions Second Postulate: the undying Human Soul

T T hat supremely interesting aspect of theism belongs to it as part and parcel of the general belief in an Unseen World, in which human beings have an interest. The belief in the personal continuance of the individual human soul after death is a very ancient one. The savage custom of burying utensils and trinkets for the use of the deceased enables us to trace it back into the Glacial Period. We may safely say that for much more than a hundred thousand years mankind have regarded themselves as

2 minute read

Read Chapter

VI Religions Third Postulate: the Ethical Significance of the Unseen World

VI Religions Third Postulate: the Ethical Significance of the Unseen World

O O ur account of the rise and progress of the general belief in an Unseen World is, however, not yet complete. No mention has been made of an element which apparently has always been present in the belief. I mean the ethical element. The savage's primeval ghost-world is always mixed up with his childlike notions of what he ought to do and what he ought not to do. The native of Tierra del Fuego, who foreboded a snowstorm because one of Mr. Darwin's party killed some birds for specimens, furnishe

1 minute read

Read Chapter

VII Is the Substance of Religion a Phantom, or an Eternal Reality?

VII Is the Substance of Religion a Phantom, or an Eternal Reality?

W W e are now prepared to see what is involved in the Reality of Religion. Speaking historically, it may be said that Religion has always had two sides: on the one side it has consisted of a theory, more or less elaborate, and on the other side it has consisted of a group of sentiments conformable to the theory. Now in all ages and in every form of Religion, the theory has comprised three essential elements: first, belief in Deity, as quasi-human; secondly, belief in an Unseen World in which hum

1 minute read

Read Chapter

VIII The Fundamental Aspect of Life

VIII The Fundamental Aspect of Life

I I often think, when working over my plants, of what Linnæus once said of the unfolding of a blossom: "I saw God in His glory passing near me, and bowed my head in worship," The scientific aspect of the same thought has been put into words by Tennyson:— No deeper thought was ever uttered by poet. For in this world of plants, which with its magician chlorophyll conjuring with sunbeams is ceaselessly at work bringing life out of death,—in this quiet vegetable world we may find the elementary pri

3 minute read

Read Chapter

IX How the Evolution of Senses expands the World

IX How the Evolution of Senses expands the World

T T he whole progression of life upon the globe, in so far as it has been achieved through natural selection, has consisted in the preservation and the propagation of those living creatures in whom the adjustment of inner relations to outer relations is most successful. This is only a more detailed and descriptive way of saying that natural selection is equivalent to survival of the fittest. The shapes of animals, as well as their capacities, have been evolved through almost infinitely slow incr

2 minute read

Read Chapter

X Nature's Eternal Lesson is the Everlasting Reality of Religion

X Nature's Eternal Lesson is the Everlasting Reality of Religion

S S o as we look back over the marvellous life-history of our planet, even from the dull time when there was no life more exalted than that of conferva scum on the surface of a pool, through ages innumerable until the present time when Man is learning how to decipher Nature's secrets, we look back over an infinitely slow series of minute adjustments, gradually and laboriously increasing the points of contact between the inner Life and the World environing. Step by step in the upward advance towa

6 minute read

Read Chapter

L'ENVOI

L'ENVOI

Yesterday, when weary with writing, and my mind quite dusty with considering these atoms, I was called to supper, and a salad I had asked for was set before me. "It seems, then," said I aloud, "that if pewter dishes, leaves of lettuce, grains of salt, drops of vinegar and oil, and slices of eggs, had been floating about in the air from all eternity, it might at last happen by chance that there would come a salad." "Yes," says my wife, "but not so nice and well dressed as this of mine is!"— Keple

37 minute read

Read Chapter

THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA

THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA

With some Account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest. With a steel portrait of Mr. Fiske, many maps, facsimiles, etc. 2 vols. crown 8vo, gilt top, $4.00. Those who care for geography and for primitive culture will doubtless find this "Discovery of America," as we have found it, one of the most agreeable and instructive books on both those topics that have appeared in a good many years.... The book brings together a great deal of information hitherto accessible only in special treatises,

30 minute read

Read Chapter

OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS

OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS

2 vols. crown 8vo, gilt top, $4.00. Mr. Fiske's "Old Virginia and Her Neighbours" adds another to those valuable and delightful studies of our early history which are fast approaching the completeness and adequacy of a comprehensive history of the beginnings of the American people. History has rarely been invested with such interest and charm as in these volumes.— The Outlook (New York)....

19 minute read

Read Chapter

THE BEGINNINGS OF NEW ENGLAND

THE BEGINNINGS OF NEW ENGLAND

Or, the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty. Crown 8vo, $2.00. Illustrated Edition. Containing Portraits, Maps, Facsimiles, Contemporary Views, Prints, and other Historic Materials. 2 vols. 8vo, gilt top, $4.00. Having in the first chapters strikingly and convincingly shown that New England's history was the birth of centuries of travail, and having prepared his readers to estimate at their true importance the events of our early colonial life, Mr. Fiske is ready to

48 minute read

Read Chapter

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

With Plans of Battles, and a Steel Portrait of Washington. 2 vols. crown 8vo, gilt top, $4.00. Illustrated Edition. Containing about 300 Illustrations. 2 vols. 8vo, gilt top, $8.00. The reader may turn to these volumes with full assurance of faith for a fresh rehearsal of the old facts, which no time can stale, and for new views of those old facts, according to the larger framework of ideas in which they can now be set by the master of a captivating style and an expert in historical philosophy.—

27 minute read

Read Chapter

THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE

THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE

In Riverside Library for Young People. With Maps. 16mo, 75 cents. John Fiske's "War of Independence" is a miracle.... A book brilliant and effective beyond measure.... It is a statement that every child can comprehend, but that only a man of consummate genius could have written.— Mrs. Caroline H. Dall , in the Springfield Republican ....

17 minute read

Read Chapter

THE CRITICAL PERIOD OF AMERICAN HISTORY, 1783-1789

THE CRITICAL PERIOD OF AMERICAN HISTORY, 1783-1789

With Map, Notes, etc. Crown 8vo, gilt top, $2.00. Illustrated Edition. Containing about 170 Illustrations. 8vo, gilt top, $4.00. The author combines in an unusual degree the impartiality of the trained scholar with the fervor of the interested narrator.... The volume should be in every library in the land.— The Congregationalist (Boston). An admirable book.... Mr. Fiske has a great talent for making history interesting to the general reader.— New York Times....

23 minute read

Read Chapter

A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES FOR SCHOOLS

A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES FOR SCHOOLS

With Topical Analysis, Suggestive Questions, and Directions for Teachers, by F. A. Hill, and Illustrations and Maps. Crown 8vo, $1.00, net. It is doubtful if Mr. Fiske has done anything better for his generation than the preparation of this text-book, which combines in a rare degree accuracy, intelligent condensation, historical discrimination, and an attractive style.— The Outlook (New York)....

18 minute read

Read Chapter

CIVIL GOVERNMENT IN THE UNITED STATES

CIVIL GOVERNMENT IN THE UNITED STATES

Considered with some Reference to its Origins. With Questions on the Text by Frank A. Hill, and Bibliographical Notes by Mr. Fiske. Crown 8vo, $1.00, net. It is most admirable, alike in plan and execution, and will do a vast amount of good in teaching our people the principles and forms of our civil institutions.— Moses Coit Tyler , Professor of American Constitutional History and Law, Cornell University ....

21 minute read

Read Chapter

OUTLINES OF COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

OUTLINES OF COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

Based on the Doctrine of Evolution, with Criticisms on the Positive Philosophy. In two volumes, 8vo, $6.00. You must allow me to thank you for the very great interest with which I have at last slowly read the whole of your work.... I never in my life read so lucid an expositor (and therefore thinker) as you are; and I think that I understand nearly the whole, though perhaps less clearly about cosmic theism and causation than other parts.— Charles Darwin . This work of Mr. Fiske's may be not unfa

31 minute read

Read Chapter

DARWINISM, AND OTHER ESSAYS

DARWINISM, AND OTHER ESSAYS

Crown 8vo, gilt top, $2.00. If ever there was a spirit thoroughly invigorated by the "joy of right understanding," it is that of the author of these pieces.... No less confident and serene than his acceptance of the utmost logical results of recent scientific discovery is Mr. Fiske's assurance that the foundations of spiritual truths, so called, cannot possibly be shaken thereby.— The Atlantic Monthly (Boston)....

19 minute read

Read Chapter

THE UNSEEN WORLD

THE UNSEEN WORLD

And Other Essays. Crown 8vo, gilt top, $2.00. To each study the writer seems to have brought, besides an excellent quality of discriminating judgment, full and fresh special knowledge, that enables him to supply much information on the subject, whatever it may be, that is not to be found in the volume he is noticing.— Boston Advertiser....

16 minute read

Read Chapter

EXCURSIONS OF AN EVOLUTIONIST

EXCURSIONS OF AN EVOLUTIONIST

Among our thoughtful essayists there are none more brilliant than Mr. John Fiske. His pure style suits his clear thought. He does not write unless he has something to say; and when he does write, he shows not only that he has thoroughly acquainted himself with the subject, but that he has to a rare degree the art of so massing his matter as to bring out the true value of the leading points in artistic relief.... The same qualities appear to good advantage in his new volume, which contains his la

30 minute read

Read Chapter

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS

Old Tales and Superstitions interpreted by Comparative Mythology. Crown 8vo, gilt top, $2.00. Mr. Fiske has given us a book which is at once sensible and attractive, on a subject about which much is written that is crotchety or tedious.— W. R. S. Ralston , in The Athenæum (London)....

15 minute read

Read Chapter

THE DESTINY OF MAN

THE DESTINY OF MAN

Viewed in the Light of His Origin. 16mo, gilt top, $1.00. One is charmed by the directness and clearness of his style, his simple and pure English, and his evident knowledge of his subject.... Of one thing we may be sure: that none are leading us more surely or rapidly to the full truth than men like the author of this little book, who reverently study the works of God for the lessons which He would teach his children.— Christian Union (New York)....

24 minute read

Read Chapter

THE IDEA OF GOD

THE IDEA OF GOD

As Affected by Modern Knowledge. 16mo, gilt top, $1.00. The vigor, the earnestness, the honesty, and the freedom from cant and subtlety in his writings are exceedingly refreshing. He is a scholar, a critic, and a thinker of the first order.— Christian Register (Boston)....

13 minute read

Read Chapter

THROUGH NATURE TO GOD

THROUGH NATURE TO GOD

16mo, gilt top, $1.00. Contents : The Mystery of Evil ; The Cosmic Roots of Love and Self-Sacrifice ; The Everlasting Reality of Religion . This book discusses, in Mr. Fiske's large and luminous way, the important subjects indicated in the contents. It falls in the same group with his "Idea of God" and "Destiny of Man," which have been an inspiration and a source of strength and light to a multitude of readers. * * * For sale by all Booksellers. Sent by mail, postpaid, on receipt of price

33 minute read

Read Chapter