good. Some of the most dangerous people are those who feel pious
because they can say, We never did any harm.

Religion often has come to mean only a multitude of repressive
regulations, apparently a scheme for making others abstain from those
things for which we have no appetite. Little wonder that children feel
only repulsion for a church which seems to take delight in finding
impiety in every natural pleasure; that men turn from a path which,
according to its prospectus, promises nothing but pain, privation, and
emptiness.

We do not object to the pain and privation provided they have their
purpose. But all nature objects to a course of life that maims,
pinches, and restricts without corresponding and compensating
development and liberty somewhere. We fight against every law of life
and court the ways of death so long as we endeavour to develop
character by putting it into bandages, leading strings, and legal
restrictions.

There is evil to be eliminated; there are thousands of things we ought
not to do. But the best way to get rid of the tares is to sow good
wheat in abundance. The way to avoid the things we ought not to do is
to do the things that ought to be done. The empty life is a standing
invitation to temptation; the busy man seldom finds the devil's card
left at his door.

Live the life above the things you would overcome. It never has been
found necessary to pass a law prohibiting the president from playing
marbles; larger interests fill his life so that these things do not
even occur to him. Give a man a great work to do and you will save him