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The stern old faiths have all pulverized. ’Tis a whole population of gentlemen and ladies out in search of religions.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Worship,” 1860

America is an opportunity to make a Religion out of the sacredness of the individual.

—John Weiss, American Religion, 1871

I have worshiped in an Evangelical church when thousands rose to their feet at the motion of one hand. I have worshiped in a Roman Catholic church when the lifting of one finger broke the motionless multitude into twinkling motion, till the magic sign was made, and all was still once more. But I never for an instant have supposed that this concentrated moment of devotion was more holy or more beautiful than when one cry from a minaret hushes a Mohammedan city to prayer, or when, at sunset, the low invocation, “Oh! the gem in the lotus—oh! the gem in the lotus,” goes murmuring, like the cooing of many doves, across the vast surface of Thibet…. I do not wish to belong to a religion only, but to the religion; it must not include less than the piety of the world.

—Thomas Wentworth Higginson,

“The Sympathy of Religions,” 1871