"I confess I know nothing of God, but as he is revealed in his works. With me, the word God stands for the unseen cause of all natural phenomena. I attribute to God no quality but what seems necessary to account for what I see in nature. My Jewish and Christian notions of God are all gone, except so far as they appear to be the utterances of nature.... As to Secularism, I think our business is with the seen, the worldly, the physical, the secular. Our whole duty seems to me to be truly and fully to unfold ourselves, and truly and fully to unfold others: to secure the greatest possible perfection of being and condition, and the largest possible share of life and enjoyment to all mankind in this present world. The machinery of sects and priesthoods for saving souls and fitting men for heaven, I regard as wasteful and injurious folly, except so far as it may tend to better men and improve their condition here. I have a hope of future life, but whatever is best for this life must be best for another life; whatever is best for the present, must be best for the eternal future. To reveal to men the laws of their own being, and to unfold to them the laws of nature generally, and to bring them into harmony with those laws, is, therefore, with me, the whole business of man. If there be another world, as 1 hope, it will, I suppose, be governed by the same laws as this. If men live on for ever, they will have all the better start in a future life, for having got well on in this. As an _art_, therefore, I believe in Secularism." J. W.