But, if we look at the matter with a little care, we shall see that we ought to turn it quite around, look at it from another point of view. Though every Bible, every particle of religious literature, every hymn, every prayer on the face of the earth, were blotted out of existence to-day, religion would not be touched. Religious books did not create religion, did not make man a religious being. It is the religious nature of man that made the Bibles, that uttered itself in prayers, that created the rituals, that sung the hymns and chanted the anthems. It is man, a religious being, who makes religious institutions, who creates all the external aspects and appearances of the religious life. And the same is true precisely in regard to moral precepts. If the Ten Commandments were blotted out of the memory of man, if every single ethical teaching of Jesus should perish, if the high and fine moral precepts of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius and all the great teachers of the pagan world should cease to exist, if there were not a printed moral precept on earth, morality would not be touched. It is not these that have created morality. It is the natural moral nature of man that has written all the commandments, whether they have come to us by the hand of Moses or of Gautama or Mohammed or Confucius or Seneca, or no matter who the medium may have been. Man is a moral being, naturally, essentially, eternally, and this is a moral universe, inherently, necessarily, eternally; and, though all the external expression of moral thought and feeling should be lost, the human race would simply reproduce them again. It is sometimes well for us to get down to the bed-rock in our thinking, and find how natural and necessary the great foundations are. The Hindu priests used to tell their followers that the earth, which was flat, rested on certain pillars, which rested again on some other foundation beneath them, and so on until thought was weary in trying to trace that upon which the earth was supposed to find its stability. And they also told their followers that, if they did not bring offerings, if they did not pay the special respect which was due to the gods, if they were not obedient to heir teachings, these pillars would give way, and the earth would be precipitated into the abyss. But we have found, as a result of our modern study of he universe, that the earth needs no pillars on which to rest; but it swings freely in its orbit, as the old verse that used to read in my schoolboy days says, "Hangs on nothing in the air," part of the universal system of things, stable in its eternal sound and motion, kept and cared for by the power that lever sleeps and never is weary. So, by studying into the foundations of the moral nature of man, we have discovered a last that it needs no artificial props or supports, but that morality is inherent, natural and eternal.