tently be termed a new religion. On the contrary, religion like
everything else is subject to the law of growth; therefore the faiths of
to-day are the legitimate result, or outcome, of the primary idea of
a Deity developed in accordance with the laws governing the peculiar
instincts which have been in the ascendancy during the life of mankind
on the earth.

The erroneous impression which under a belief in the unknown has come
to prevail, namely, that the moral law is the result of religion; or,
in other words, that the human conscience is in some manner dependent
on supernaturalism for its origin and maintenance, is, with a better
and clearer understanding of the past history of the development of the
human race, being gradually dispelled. On one point we may reasonably
rest assured that the knowledge of right and wrong and our sense of
justice and right-living have been developed quite independently of all
religious beliefs. The moral law embodied in the golden rule is not an
outgrowth of mysticism, or of man's notions of the unknowable; but,
on the contrary, is the result of experience, and was formulated in
response to a recognized law of human necessity,--a law which involves
the fundamental principle of progress. The history of human development
shows conclusively that mankind GREW into the recognition of the moral
law, that through sympathy, or a desire for the welfare of others,--a
character which had its root in maternal affection,--conscience and the
moral sense were evolved.

While the moral law and the conscience may not be accounted as in any
sense the result of man's ideas concerning the unknowable, neither can
the errors and weaknesses developed in human nature be regarded as the
result of religion. Although the sexual excesses which during three or
four thousand years were practiced as sacred rites, and treated as
part and parcel of religion in various parts of the world, have had the
effect to stimulate and strengthen the animal nature in man, yet these
rites may not be accounted as the primary cause of the supremacy of the
lower nature over the higher faculties. On the contrary, the impulse
which has been termed religion, with all the vagaries which its history
presents, is to be regarded more as an effect than as a cause. The stage
of a nation's development regulates its religion. Man creates his own
gods; they are powerless to change him.

As written history records only those events in human exper