So, girl writers, who question me, you see there have been other pebbles on my beach, and some big ones, too.

The question, then, that has been put so many times is, “Can there be any compatibility between religion and the stage?”

Now had it been a question of church and stage, I should have been forced to admit that the exclusive spirit of the first, and the unending occupation of the second, kept them uncomfortably far apart.  But the question has invariably been as to a compatibility between religion and the stage.  Now I take it that religion means a belief in God, and the desire and effort to do His will; therefore I see nothing incompatible between religion and acting.  I am a church-woman now; but for many years circumstances prevented my entering the great army of Christians who have made public confession of their faith, and received baptism as an outward and visible sign of a spiritual change.  Yet during those long years without a church I was not without religion.  I knew naught of “justification,” of “predestination,” of “transubstantiation.”  I only knew I must obey the will of God.  Here was the Bible; it was the word of God.  There was Christ, beautiful, tender, adorable, and he said:  “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.  This is the first and great commandment; and the second is like unto it.  Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

Add to these the old Mosaic “Ten,” and you have my religious creed complete.  And though it is simple enough for a child to comprehend, it is difficult for the wisest to give perfect obedience, because it is not always easy to love that tormenting neighbour, even a little bit, let alone as well as oneself.  How I wish there was some other word to take the place of “religion.”  It has been so abused, so misconstrued.  Thousands of people shrink from the very sound of it, believing that to be religious means the solemn, sour-faced setting of one foot before the other in a hard and narrow way—­the shutting out of all beauty, the cutting off of all enjoyment.  Oh, the pity! the pity!  Can’t they read?

“Let all those that seek thee be joyful and glad in thee, and let such as love thee and thy salvation say always, The Lord be praised.”  Again, “The Lord loveth a cheerful giver.”  But it is not always in giving alone that He loves cheerfulness.  Real love and trust in God—­which is religion, mind you—­makes the heart feather light, opens the eye to beauty, the heart to sympathy, the ear to harmony, and all the merriment and joy of life is but the sweeter for the reverent gratitude one returns to the Divine Giver.