ence."

"Your difference is deeper than that," I assured her. "It is in your
common motherhood. Your children grow up in a world where everybody
loves them. They find life made rich and happy for them by the diffused
love and wisdom of all mothers. So it is easy for you to think of God in
the terms of a similar diffused and competent love. I think you are far
nearer right than we are."

"What I cannot understand," she pursued carefully, "is your preservation
of such a very ancient state of mind. This patriarchal idea you tell me
is thousands of years old?"

"Oh yes--four, five, six thousand--every so many."

"And you have made wonderful progress in those years--in other things?"

"We certainly have. But religion is different. You see, our religions
come from behind us, and are initiated by some great teacher who is
dead. He is supposed to have known the whole thing and taught it,
finally. All we have to do is believe--and obey."

"Who was the great Hebrew teacher?"

"Oh--there it was different. The Hebrew religion is an accumulation of
extremely ancient traditions, some far older than their people, and grew
by accretion down the ages. We consider it inspired--'the Word of God.'"

"How do you know it is?"

"Because it says so."

"Does it say so in as many words? Who wrote that in?"

I began to try to recall some text that did say so, and could not bring
it to mind.

"Apart from that," she pursued, "what I cannot understand is why you
keep these early religious ideas so long. You have changed all your
others, haven't you?"

"Pretty generally," I agreed. "But this we call 'revealed religion,'
and think it is final. But tell me more about these little temples of
yours," I urged. "And these Temple Mothers you run to."

Then she gave me an extended lesson in applied religion, which I will
endeavor to concentrate.

They developed their central theory of a Loving Power, and assumed that
its relation to them was motherly--that it desired their welfare and
especially their development. Their relation to it, similarly, was
filial, a loving appreciation and a glad fulfillment of its high
purposes. Then, being nothing if not practical, they set their keen
and active minds to discover the kind of conduct expected of them. This
worked out in a most admirable system of ethics. The principle of Love
was universally recognized--and used.

Patience, gentleness, courtesy, all that we call "good breeding," was
part of t