t God
made them thus! Such a belief is contrary to reason and to justice.

It is easy to see why, in this old view of the relationship between God
and man, salvation was to be by faith. It was impossible for a person to
be saved by his merit because, if his qualities were given to him by God
at birth, he had no merit. His very ability to comprehend spiritual
truth and his moral strength to resist temptation, were conferred upon
him, not earned by him. If this popular view is sound, human beings
should be neither praised nor censured. They are simply human automata
operated by such degree of mental and moral ability as God chose to
assign to them. If this be true, genius should have no credit for its
accomplishments, indolence no frown of disapproval, cowardice no lash of
condemnation, tolerance no need of praise, cruelty no rebuke, virtue no
applause and heroism no fame for its selfless sacrifice. And yet this
absurd and illogical belief lingers in the minds of millions of people.
It is believed because it always has been believed.

If materialism is an impossible philosophy, then the popular belief that
the soul is created at birth is also impossible. It is a theory that
encumbers its belief in immortality with conditions that destroy justice
and defy logic. That old form of belief has outlived its day. It was
possible at any time only because there was too little information and,
like the old belief that the world was flat, it must yield place to the
newer knowledge. The truth of evolution is the stanchest friend of
religion. It is the foundation on which may be built a scientific belief
in a Supreme Being, a rational faith in immortality and a brotherhood of
man that has a basis in nature itself. The very idea that was hastily
thought to be destructive of a belief in God and heaven and immortality
is rapidly becoming the most important witness to the truth of them all.
While it is true that in the earliest days of evolution the most eminent
scientists were agnostic, it is equally true that today the most eminent
scientists of the world believe in the existence of the soul, and in its
immortality, and base that belief upon scientific grounds.

What is the essence of the facts of evolution and how does it give
evidence against materialism and for immortality? Evolution is an
orderly unfolding from the single to the diversified, from the simple to
the complex, in which process life evolves by passing from lower to
hig