The essence of all pantheism, evolutionism, and modern cosmic religion is really in this proposition: that Nature is our mother.

Unfortunately, if you regard Nature as a mother, you discover that she is a step-mother.

The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister.

We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire, but not to imitate.

This gives to the typically Christian pleasure in this earth a strange touch of lightness that is almost frivolity.