I have never taken shelter in any form of ecclesiasticism. I have never tried to clothe myself in the delusive garments of a superstitious age. I have never pinned my faith to a man-made God, however venerable. I have inured my mind to the open air of the universe, to things as they are, to the dealings of a Power that exacts an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth; a power that deals on the square. Those apparent outlaws of the heavens, the comets, do not disturb the naturist; sidereal space strewn with dead worlds and burnt-out suns do not disturb him; the spectacle of the great planets rolling through space void of life for untold millions of years, does not disturb him; and if life should never come to them, and should ultimately disappear from the earth, he would not lose faith; he could behold Europe drenched with the blood of a needless, wicked war and not lose faith; he could see civilization retarded and the unjust cause triumph, and still know that the Creative Energy has our good at heart and always will have it. II The demand of our day is for a scientific religion--an attitude of mind toward creation begotten by knowledge, in which fear, personal hopes, individual good, and the so-called “other world,” play little part. Virtuous actions, upright conduct, heroic character, the practice of the Golden Rule, are seen to be their own reward, and the security of the future is in well-doing and well-being in the present. This is not religion in the old ecclesiastical sense, but in the new scientific sense; a religion that moves us to fight vice, crime, war, intemperance, for self-preservation and in brotherly love, and not in obedience to theological dogma or the command of a God; a religion that opens our eyes to the wonder and beauty of the world, and that makes us at home in this world. The old religion is a tree that has borne its fruit. It is dying at the top; it is feeble at the root. It no longer touches men’s lives as of old. The great things that are done to-day are not done in the name of religion, but in the name of science, of humanity, of civilization. The brotherhood that has force and meaning is no longer a sectarian brotherhood; it is larger than all the churches combined. The naturist must see all things in the light of his experiences in this world. He experiences no miracles; he sees the cosmic energy as no respecter of persons; he sees the rains falling alike upon the just and the unjust; he sees the vast, impartial, undiscriminating movements of Nature all about him; he learns that the land cannot sustain life without the fertilizing rains, yet he beholds the clouds pouring out their bounty into the sea just as freely as upon the land; he beholds the inorganic crushing the organic all about him, and yet he knows that the latter is nothing without the former.