The stone falls on Sirius by the same law of gravitation as on the earth; the distances of the planets, the combinations of chemical elements are based on arithmetical ratios, and everywhere the same causes produce the same effects. Nowhere in nature is there anything arbitrary, but everywhere law. True, reason cannot comprehend the origin of things, but neither is she anywhere in conflict with the laws that govern all things. Reason and the universe are in harmony; they must therefore have the same origin. Even when, through the imperfection of all created things, reason enters on paths which lead to error, truth is still the one object of her search. Reason may thus be brought into conflict with many an honored tradition. She rejects miracle, "faith's dearest child," and refuses to admit that Omnipotence can ever find it necessary for the attainment of its purposes to suspend, in isolated cases, the operation of those laws by which the universe is eternally governed. But these doubts are not directed against religion, but against the form in which religion is presented to us. Christianity has raised the world from barbarism to civilization. Its influence has, in the course of centuries, abolished slavery, ennobled work, emancipated women, and revealed eternity. But was it dogma that brought these blessings? It is possible to avoid misunderstandings with regard to all subjects except those which transcend human conception, and these are the very subjects over which men have fought and desolated the world for the last eighteen hundred years, from the extermination of the Arians, on through the Thirty Years' War, to the scaffold of the Inquisition, and what is the result of all this fighting? The same differences of opinion as ever. We may accept the doctrines of religion, as we accept the assurance of a trusty friend, without examination, but the kernel of all religions is the morality they teach, of which the Christian is the purest and most far-reaching. And yet men speak slightingly of a barren morality, and place the form in which religion is presented before everything else. I fear it is the pulpit zealot, who tries to persuade where he cannot convince, that empties the church with his sermons. After all, why should not every pious prayer, whether addressed to Buddha, to Allah, or to Jehovah, be heard by the same God, beside whom there is none other? Does not the mother hear her child's petition in whatever language it lisps her name? Reason is nowhere in conflict with morality, for the good is always finally identical with the rational; but whether our actions shall or shall not correspond with the good, reason cannot decide. Here the ruling part of the soul is supreme, the soul which feels, acts, and wills. To her alone, not to her two vassals, has God entrusted the two-edged sword of freewill, that gift which, as Scripture tells us, may be our salvation or our perdition.