Page:Terminations (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1895).djvu/200

188 have told you, but what came to pass was that an altar, such as was, after all, within every body's compass, lighted with perpetual candles and dedicated to these secret rites, reared itself in his spiritual spaces. He had wondered of old, in some embarrassment, whether he had a religion; being very sure, and not a little content, that he had not at all events the religion some of the people he had known wanted him to have. Gradually this question was straightened out for him; it became clear to him that the religion instilled by his earliest consciousness had been simply the religion of the Dead. It suited his inclination, it satisfied his spirit, it gave employment to his piety. It answered his love of great offices, of a solemn and splendid ritual; for no shrine could be more be decked and no ceremonial more stately than those to which his worship was attached. He had no imagination about these things save that they were accessible to every one who should ever feel the need of them. The poorest could build such temples of the spirit-could make them blaze with candles and smoke with incense, make them flush with pictures and flowers. The cost, in common phrase, of keeping them up fell entirely on the liberal heart.