orefathers would have seemed purely
heathen, has become in their eyes an ideal element of Christian
character. I am not asking whether or not they are right, I am only
pointing out the change. The persons to whom I refer have still
retained for the most part their nominal connection with Christianity,
in spite of their discarding of its more pessimistic theological
elements. But in that "theory of evolution" which, gathering momentum
for a century, has within the past twenty-five years swept so rapidly
over Europe and America, we see the ground laid for a new sort of
religion of Nature, which has entirely displaced Christianity from the
thought of a large part of our generation. The idea of a universal
evolution lends itself to a doctrine of general meliorism and progress
which fits the religious needs of the healthy-minded so well that it
seems almost as if it might have been created for their use.
Accordingly we find "evolutionism" interpreted thus optimistically and
embraced as a substitute for the religion they were born in, by a
multitude of our contemporaries who have either been trained
scientifically, or been fond of reading popular science, and who had
already begun to be inwardly dissatisfied with what seemed to them the
harshness and irrationality of the orthodox Christian scheme. As
examples are better than descriptions, I will quote a document received
in answer to Professor Starbuck's circular of questions.

The writer's state of mind may by courtesy be called a religion, for it
is his reaction on the whole nature of things, it is systematic and
reflective and it loyally binds him to certain inner ideals. I think
you will recognize in him, coarse-meated and incapable of wounded
spirit as he is, a sufficiently familiar contemporary type.

Q. What does Religion mean to you?

A. It means nothing; and it seems, so far as I can observe useless to
others. I am sixty-seven years of age and have resided in X fifty
years, and have been in business forty-five, consequently I have some
little experience of life and men, and some women too, and I find that
the most religious and pious people are as a rule those most lacking in
uprightness and morality.

The men who do not go to church or have any religious convictions are
the best. Praying, singing of hymns, and sermonizing are
pernicious--they teach us to rely on some supernatural power, when we
ought to rely on ourselves. I TEEtotally disbelieve in a