res, our forefathers made a compact, and a nation was
born in that day. It is on creeds that strong men are nourished, and
that which nourishes the leaders into eminence is necessary to keep the
masses from sinking. A man who really thinks, will think his way into
light. He may turn many a somersault, but he will come right side up
at last. But people in general do not think, and if they refuse to be
walled in by other people's thoughts, they inevitably flop and flounder
into pitiable prostration. So important is it, that a poor creed is
better than none at all. Truth, even adulterated as we get it, is a
tonic. Bring forward something tangible, something positive, something
that means something, and it will do. But this flowery, misty, dreamy
humanitarianism,--I say humanitarianism, because I don't know what that
is, and I don't know what the thing I am driving at is, so I put the
two unknown quantities together in a mathematical hope that minus into
minus may give plus,--this milk-and-watery muddle of dreary negations,
that remits the world to its original fluidic state of chaos, I spew it
out of my mouth. It was not on such pap our Caesars fed that made them
grow so great. I believe that the common people of early New England
were such lusty men, because they strengthened themselves by gnawing at
their tough old creeds. Give one something to believe, and he can get
at it and believe it; but set out butting your head against nothing,
and the chances are that you will break your neck. Take a good stout
Christian, or a good sturdy Pagan, and you find something to bring up
against; but with nebulous vapidists you are always slumping through
and sprawling everywhere.

Of course, I do not mean that sincere and sensible people never change
nor modify their faith. I wish to say, for its emphasis, if you will
allow me, that they never do anything else; but generally the change is
a gradual and natural one,--a growth, not a convulsion,--a reformation,
not a revolution. When it is otherwise, it is a serious matter, not to
be lightly done or flippantly discussed. If you really had a religious
belief, it threw out roots and rootlets through all your life. It
sucked in strength from every source. It intertwined itself through
love and labor, through suffering and song, about every fibre of your
soul. You cannot pull it up or dig it up, or in any way displace it,
without setting the very foundations of your life a-quiv