Leuthold laughed louder than was his wont. "It is easy enough to answer you, dear child. In the first place, there are multitudes of men besides myself who belong to no church. In the second place, the number of people who profess to believe a creed is no proof of its truth, but only of the ignorance and narrow-mindedness of those professing such belief. Millions of men have been pantheists, and counted all those who did not share their faith criminal. Every religion condemns all others as erroneous. Which is right? As long as all were ignorant of the causes of the mighty and glorious operations of nature, these were ascribed to supernatural agencies and regarded as revelations of the divine. Thunder and lightning, light and air, all were governed, according to the ancients, as among savages at the present day, by their own several deities; every natural event was ascribed to some being, half man, half god; and thus heaven and earth were peopled with good and evil spirits, friendly or hostile to mankind. This superstition fled at the approach of science, or at least it became weakened,--etherialized. With increasing knowledge of natural laws, the sensual gods of Greece and Rome lost form and substance, and finally vanished, to be replaced by a true appreciation of the elements as such, and a faith in a central Providence ruling all things wisely and well. This is a great improvement; but it is not enough. We still have a Trinity,--a Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; we still have angels, demons, and saints,--a multitude of good and evil deities, who have followed us down from old pagan times, and who, although more respectably apparelled, are still prepared to work all kinds of miracles. The more fully the laws of matter are laid bare to our searching eyes, the dimmer grows our religious belief,--as the shadow, which in the darkness we have taken for the substance itself, fades before the first ray of sunlight, which reveals the substance distinctly. The various gods of all ages and climes were only the shadows cast by the operation of natural laws; as soon as the light of science fell upon them, they vanished. Thus, religious fancy was driven away from this physical world, as the laws ruling it were discovered, and obliged to seek a more abstract domain; but even there it is not secure; for scientific inquiry, climbing from height to height, and gaining in vigour with every fresh advance, long ago began to follow it thither; and it must consent to still greater concessions, if it would not be driven from its last foothold,--its self-created heaven!" Leuthold paused. Ernestine's vague look of wonder reminded him that his habit of speech had carried him too far for the comprehension of a child. Nevertheless, it excited him to hear his own voice speaking thus once more, and his gray eyes glittered strangely as he observed the effect of his words, only half understood as they were, upon Ernestine.