I can remember as a boy how I disliked to hear the church bells ringing for service. I hated them. They made me shudder. And I used to think to myself that I must be naturally wicked and irreligious to be so affected. "They ring for God's service and you shudder. You must be indeed the wicked boy they say." So I thought many a time. And now I know that I disliked the bells then, as I dislike them now, because of all sounds that of bells is to me the harshest and noisiest. I dislike not only church bells, but all bells. I have no prejudice against dinner, yet I would willingly wait in some houses half an hour, or even have it half-cold if it could be announced without a bell. And church bells! Very few are in tune, none are sweet toned, all are rung far louder and faster than they should be, so that their notes, which might be bearable, become a wrangling abomination. But I love the monastery gongs in Burma because they are delicately tuned, and they are rung softly and with such proper intervals between each note that there is no jar, none of that hideous conflict of the dying vibrations with the new note that is maddening to the brain. It is trivial, maybe, but it is real. And out of such trivialities is life made. Out of such are our recollections built. I shall never remember the call to Christian prayer without a shudder of dislike, a putting of my fingers in my ears. I shall never recall the Buddhist gongs ringing down the evening air across the misty river without there rising within me some of that beauty, that gentleness and harmony, to which they seem such a perfect echo. CHAPTER XXXI. WHAT RELIGION IS. What, then, is religion? Do any of the definitions given at the beginning explain what it really is? Is it a theory of the universe, is it morality, is it future rewards and punishments? It may be all or none of these things. Is it creeds, dogmas, speculations, or theories of any kind? It is none of these things. Religion is the recognition and cultivation of our highest emotions, of our more beautiful instincts, of all that we know is best in us. What these emotions may be varies in each people according to their natures, their circumstances, their stage of civilisation. In the Latins some emotions predominate, in the Teutons others, in the Hindus yet others. Each race of men has its own garden wherein grow flowers that are not found elsewhere, and of these they make their faiths. Some of these emotions I have tried to show in this book. For the Latins they are the emotions of fatherhood, of prayer, and confession, of sacrifice and atonement, of motherhood, of art and beauty, of obedience, of rule, of mercy, of forgiveness, of the resurrection of the body, of prayer for the dead, of strong self-denial and asceticism, of many others; but those, I think, are the chief.