Besides, they discovered that nature, and art, and human affection, which are really revelations of God, were actually sins against Him.

As I said before, I can never forgive the Puritans for eradicating the beauty from holiness, and for giving man the spirit of heaviness in place of the garment of praise." "I wonder if Paganism helped you much when you were poor and ill and unhappy, and things in general had gone wrong with you.

I daresay it was very nice for the cheerful, prosperous people; but how about those who had never got what they wanted out of life, and were never likely to get it ?" Christopher, like other people, looked at most matters from his own individual standpoint; and his own individual standpoint was not at all a comfortable spot just then.
"The Greeks suffered and died as did the Jews and the Christians," replied Elisabeth, "yet they were a joyous and light-hearted race.

It is not sorrow that saddens the world, but rather modern Christianity's idealization of sorrow.

I do not believe we should be half as miserable as we are if we did not believe that there is virtue in misery, and that by disowning our mercies and discarding our blessings we are currying favour in the eyes of the Being, Who, nevertheless, has showered those mercies and those blessings upon us." Thus had Alan Tremaine's influence gradually unmoored Elisabeth from the old faiths in which she had been brought up; and he had done it so gradually that the girl was quite unconscious of how far she had drifted from her former anchorage.