The whole world in its wonderful history has passed through the struggle for life, the struggle for eternal life; and every one of us, in his own not less wonderful history, has had to pass through the same wonderful struggle: for, without it, no religion, whatever its sacred books may be, will find in any human heart that soil in which alone it can strike root and on which alone it can grow and bear fruit. We must all have our own bookless religion, if the sacred books, whatever they may be, are to find a safe and solid foundation within ourselves. No temple can stand without that foundation, and it is because that foundation is so often neglected that the walls of the temple become unsafe and threaten to fall. _Gifford Lectures, I._ The heart and mind and soul of man are the same under every sky, in all the varying circumstances of human life; and it would be awful to believe that _any_ human beings should have been deprived of that light 'which lighteth _every_ man that cometh into the world.' It is that light which lighteth every man, and which has lighted all the religions of the world, call them bookless or literate, human or divine, natural or supernatural, which alone can dispel the darkness of doubt and fear that has come over the world. What our age wants more than anything else is _Natural Religion_. Whatever meaning different theologians may attach to _Supernatural Religion_, history teaches us that nothing is so natural as the supernatural. But the supernatural must always be _superimposed_ on the natural. Supernatural religion without natural religion is a house built on sand, and when, as in our days, the rain of doubt descends, and the floods of criticism come, and the winds of unbelief and despair blow and beat upon that house, that house will fall because it was not founded on the rock of bookless religion, of natural religion, of eternal religion. _Gifford Lectures, I._ Every religion, being the property of the young and the old, the wise and the foolish, must always be a kind of compromise, and, while protesting against real corruptions and degradations, we must learn to bear with those whose language differs from our own, and trust that in spite of the tares which have sprung up during the night, some grains of wheat will ripen towards the harvest in every honest heart. _Gifford Lectures, II._ In all the fundamentals of religion we are neither better nor worse than our neighbours, neither more wise nor more unwise than all the members of that great family who have been taught to know themselves as children of one and the same Father in Heaven. _Gifford Lectures, II._