ament is peculiar to Christianity and this is equally true of
moral precepts.

The gods of all the supernaturalistic interpretations of religion are so
many creations of the dominant or master class, and their revelations
were put into their mouths by the makers for the purpose of keeping the
slave class ignorant and contented.

Orthodox Christians earnestly contend that this naturalistic doctrine
makes for immorality. Heretical socialists rationally answer that the
life which men, women and children live with reference to their
terrestrial influence, rather than to celestial rewards or punishments,
is the only one which is lived to any moral purpose.

According to socialism, morality, religion and Christianity are but
synonyms of one and the same reality, which consists wholly in the
desire and effort of a man to learn the laws or doings of nature, and to
conform his thoughts and words to them, in order to make his present
life on earth, and that of others, as long and happy as possible, and
not at all in a desire and effort to learn what the will of a conscious,
personal god is and to conform to it, in order to avoid a hell and gain
a heaven for a future life in the sky.

O threats of Hell and Hopes of Paradise!
One thing at least is certain--This Life flies;
One thing is certain and the rest is Lies;
The Flower that once has blown forever dies.

If you object that this is a representation of a sceptical poet, I reply
that it is in alignment with a representation of a scriptural preacher:

For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts;
Even one thing befalleth them;
As the one dieth, so dieth the other;
Yea, they have all one breath;
So that a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast;
For all is vanity.
All go unto one place;
All are of the dust,
And all turn to dust again.

Darwin showed that each man in his physical development from the
embryonic cell to birth passes through, by short cuts, the different
forms of life from say, the worm, fish and lemur with all that went
before, intervened between and followed after, and Romanes showed that
this is as true of the mind as of the body; that, in fact, all the
representatives of the animal kingdom are physically and psychically
related, and therefore on the same level as to their origin and destiny.

In his illuminating book entitled, "The Universal Kinship," Professor
Moore says:

The embryonic development of a hu