Religion Unchangeable
Human religious nature remains constant despite changes in outward forms and practices.
Farmers once plowed with a forked stick, and now with the steel gang-plow. But Julius Cæsar said, nearly twenty centuries ago, that a soldier should have a pound of wheat per day, and the German Government allows the same pound of wheat per day to its soldiers, for their day’s march. Gone Julius Cæsar’s forked stick for raising the pound of wheat. The Italian plows with a steel mole-board, but he still wants his pound of flour for his hunger. Gone also the old offerings in the temples, and the old creeds, and the old views of the Sabbath. But man still sings, and prays, and struggles with temptation, and weeps, smiting upon his breast, and is forgiven, and dies. This religious nature of man abides unshaken; the credal leaves fall off; but the tree grows on. That vital growth is called religion--the life of God in the soul of man.
— N. D. HILLIS