eed exhortations against pride, my besetting sin. I
built this chapel, not because I am good, but in order to grow better.
Every dwelling has its room in which the inmates gather to eat, to
study, to work, to sleep; why not to pray, the most important privilege
of many that divide humanity from brutes? After all, the pagans were
wiser than we, and the heads of families were household priests,
setting examples of piety at every rising of the sun."

"Let us see. Greek and Roman fathers laid a cake dripping with wine, a
wreath of violets, a heart of honey-comb, a brace of doves on the home
altar, and immediately thereafter, set the example of violating every
clause in the Decalogue. Mark you, paganism drew fine lines in morals,
long anterior to the era of monotheism and of Moses, and furnished
immortal types of all the virtues; yet the excess of its religious
ceremonial, robbed it of vital fructifying energies. The frequency and
publicity of sacerdotal service, usurped the place of daily individual
piety. The tendency of all outward symbolical observances, unduly
multiplied, is to substitute mere formalism for fervor."

"Leighton, humanity craves the concrete. All the universe is God's
temple, yet the chill breath of the abstract freezes our hearts; and we
pray best in some pillared niche consecrated and set apart, I recall a
day in Umbria, when the wonderful light of sunset fell on ilex and
olive, on mountain snows, on valleys billowing between vine-mantled
hills, on creamy marble walls, on columned campaniles; and standing
there, I seemed verily to absorb, to become saturated as it were, with
the reigning essence of beauty. I walked on, a few steps, lifted a
worn, frayed leather curtain, and looked into a small gray, dingy
church, where a mist of incense blurred the lights on the ancient
altar, and the muffled roll of an organ broke into sonorous waves, like
reverberations of far-away thunder; and why was it, tell me, that the
universal glory thrilled me only as a sensuous chord of color, but in
the dark corner consecrated to the worship of our God, my soul
expanded, as if a holy finger touched it, and I fell on my knees, and
prayed? Each of us comes into this world dowered with the behest to
make desperate war against that indissoluble 'Triple Alliance, the
World, the Flesh and the Devil,' and needing all the auxiliaries
possible, I resort to conscription wherever I can recruit. Since I am
two thousand years too young