Let us be saints, then, if we can, whether or not
we succeed visibly and temporally. But in our Father's house are
many mansions, and each of us must discover for himself the kind
of religion and the amount of saintship which best comports with
what he believes to be his powers and feels to be his truest
mission and vocation. There are no successes to be guaranteed
and no set orders to be given to individuals, so long as we
follow the methods of empirical philosophy.
[224] See above, p. 321.
This is my conclusion so far. I know that on some of your minds
it leaves a feeling of wonder that such a method should have been
applied to such a subject, and this in spite of all those remarks
about empiricism which I made at the beginning of Lecture
XIII.[225] How, you say, can religion, which believes in two
worlds and an invisible order, be estimated by the adaptation of
its fruits to this world's order alone? It is its truth, not its
utility, you insist, upon which our verdict ought to depend. If
religion is true, its fruits are good fruits, even though in this
world they should prove uniformly ill adapted and full of naught
but pathos.
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