The Walt Whitman Archive
Complete Prose Works
The true Christian religion, (such was the
teaching of Elias Hicks,) consists neither in rites or Bibles or sermons or
Sundays—but in noiseless secret ecstasy and unremitted aspiration, in
purity, in a good practical life, in chanty to the poor and toleration to all. He
said, "A man may keep the Sabbath, may belong to a church and attend all the
observances, have regular family prayer, keep a well-bound copy of the Hebrew
Scriptures in a conspicuous
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place in his house, and yet not be a truly religious
person at all." E. believ'd little in a church as organiz'd—even his
own—with houses, ministers, or with salaries, creeds, Sundays, saints,
Bibles, holy festivals, &c. But he believ'd always in the universal
church, in the soul of man, invisibly rapt, ever-waiting, ever-responding to
universal truths.—He was fond of pithy proverbs. He said, "it matters
not where you live, but how you live." He said once to my father, "They talk of
the devil—I tell thee, Walter, there is no worse devil than
man."