d, but I labor in the hope that when mankind have advanced
into the light of anthropological science they shall become
enlightened enough to sympathize with the supernal life in reverent
love, and to organize a social condition here which will bring even
the lowest classes into so satisfactory a condition that
philosophizers will no longer have to wrestle with the problem of evil
and explain the great mystery that a universe so full of the marks of
a grandly benevolent purpose should still be marred and dishonored by
human misery and degradation. It would be an unsolvable problem to-day
did we not perceive through spiritual science the immense
preponderance of good in the glorious plan of life of which this world
shows only the beginning.

As an anthropologist, I cannot but esteem and cherish the religious
element of human nature. Sincere worship is simply the most exalted
love, and fills human life with nobility and benevolence; let those
who can, worship the divine; let those who shrink from the thought of
the Infinite, worship the most exalted beings they may conceive, and
let those who cannot quite reach the exalted beings of the spirit
world, worship their parents or children, or conjugal companions,--for
worship is but unlimited love,--and they who recoil from humanity may
perhaps find something to adore in the beauty and grandeur of nature
on this globe, which every summer arrays in beauty, and in the
grandeur of stellar worlds. From love and adoration come
obedience,--which is the perfect life, for it is not slavery, but
harmony and delight.

Profound science does not take away religion, as superficial or false
science does, but develops a far nobler, holier, and more beneficent
religion than any churches comprehend. It corresponds to that ideal
religion which belongs to the higher realms of the spirit world, and
which has sometimes appeared on earth in inspired mortals, and most
often in women whose souls were devoted to love. That this religious
sentiment appeared in the time of Jesus among inspired men, I believe,
and their lives and sentiments have been to me an inspiration,
enabling me to believe in the _practicability_ of that which
philosophy teaches concerning the religious life, which without those
illustrious examples might have seemed an unattainable excellence in
the present conditions of society.

I do not object to any worship of Jesus and his illustrious associate
reformers, for true worship w