“In Central Asia, near the river Oxus, there is said to be a famous rock, called the Lamp Rock, from a strange light that seems to issue from a cavern far up on the side of the mountain. The natives have a superstitious fear of the rock, and ascribe the light to some dragon or demon that lives in the cave. Recently a bold English traveler climbed up and investigated the phenomenon. The light was found, after all, to be only the light of common day. The cave proved to be a tunnel, and the mysterious light came through the rock from the other side, making a strong glow or nimbus at the mouth of the dark cavern.

This incident, so typical of much that has taken place and is still taking place in the world, especially in the religious experience of mankind, has suggested the title to this volume of essays, in which I have urged the sufficiency and the universality of natural law, and that most of the mysterious lights with which our fears, our ignorance, or our superstitions have invested the subject of religion, when brought to the test of reason, either vanish entirely or give place to the light of common day.”

“When I look up at the starry heavens at night and reflect upon what it is that I really see there, I am constrained to say, “There is no god.” The mind staggers in its attempt to grasp the idea of a being that could do that. It is futile to attempt it. It is not the works of some god that I see there. I am face to face with a power that baffles speech. I see no lineaments of personality, no human traits, but an energy upon whose currents solar systems are but bubbles. In the presence of it man and the race of man are less than motes in the air. I doubt if any mind can expand its conception of god sufficiently to meet the astounding disclosures of modern science. It is easier to say there is no god. The universe is so unhuman, that is, it goes its way with so little thought of man. He is but an incident, not an end. We must adjust our notions to the discovery that things are not shaped to him, but that he is shaped to them. The air was not made for his lungs, but he has lungs because there is air; the light was not created for his eye, but he has eyes because there is light. All the forces of nature are going their own way; man avails himself of them, or catches a ride as best he can. If he keeps his seat he prospers; if he misses his hold and falls he is crushed.”

“Science kills credulity and superstition, but to the well-balanced mind it enhances the feeling of wonder, of veneration, and of kinship which we feel in the presence of the miraculous universe.”

— John Burroughs (1920), Accepting the Universe (pg. 108)

“The truths of naturalism do not satisfy the moral and religious nature.”

— John Burroughs (1920), Accepting the Universe (pg. 301)

“My elements and my forces go back into the original sources out of which they came, and these sources are perennial in this vast, wonderful, divine cosmos. I do not mind if you call them material forces; the material and the spiritual are inseparable. I do not mind if you call this view the infidelity (or atheism) of science; science, too is divine; all knowledge is knowledge of god.”

— John Burroughs (1920), Accepting the Universe [3]

“We must get rid of the great ‘moral governor’ or head director. He is a fiction of our brains.”

— John Burroughs (c.1920) [2]