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THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION

fortunately we are not always fully alive to it. Had we been so, pain would long since have disappeared from the world. For ordinarily what a man thinks to be really necessary he will seek at all hazards. If the earning of money is thought by a man to be really necessary for the support of his family, he will not shrink from running into dangers to secure it. It is a pity we do not consider Religion to be necessary in the same way. Instead, we regard it as an ornament, a decoration, and not a component part of man’s life.

It is also a great pity that though the aim of every man in this world is necessarily religious, inasmuch as he is working always to remove want and attain Eternal Bliss, yet due to certain grave errors he has been misdirected and led to consider the true Religion, the definition of which we have just given, as a thing of minor importance. What is the cause of this! Why do we not perceive its