Not only was this life in the wilderness favorable to morality, it contributed equally well to the cultivation of the religious sentiment in man. Man is by nature a religious animal, and where natural conditions prevail instead of artificial ones, true to his nature, man inclines toward a religious state of mind. There is something in the awful stillness of the wood that says to man--"God is in this solitude!" The murmur of the brook splashing over its pebbly bed, and the mournful sighing of the winds through the tree tops, whisper to his spirit the fundamental truth of all religion--"God lives!" The stars looking down through the trees or mirrored in stream or lake bear witness to the same great truth; while the orderly course of the seasons, bringing with such undeviating regularity seed time and harvest, the period of summer's growth and winter's rest, accompanied by the fact of the sun shining for the wicked as for the good, and the rain falling upon the just and the unjust alike, gives ample evidence of God's interest in the world he has created and of his beneficence and mercy towards all men. When conditions were so favorable for the development of natural religion, it is not surprising that profound interest was manifested also in revealed religion. Especially when we remember that these pioneers of the wilderness were but from one to three generations removed from ancestors who had left the Old World for the express purpose of worshiping God according to their understanding of that same revealed religion. That skepticism of the eighteenth century which in some quarters had such a baneful influence upon religious belief was scarcely felt in these settlements remote from the old centers of the New World civilization. These men of the wilderness believed the Bible and looked upon it with the reverence worthy of men descended from Protestant fathers who had in their system of theology made it take the place of pope and church, and established it as their sole authority and infallible guide in the matters of faith and morals. While many of them refused to identify themselves with any of the various sects about them, or subscribe to their creeds, they were profound believers in the word of God, and often confessed this short creed which they duly impressed upon their descendants: "I believe in God, in the Bible, and in a state of future rewards and punishments."