EVOLUTION.

All subjects pertaining to our knowledge of the soul are too subtle to
be weighed and proved by external intellect alone. Our lives are ruled
by such a hotch-potch of inherited beliefs and tendencies, that it is
almost impossible for us to use any discrimination concerning them; or
to arraign ourselves before the tribunal of our own better judgment in
such manner as to enable us to separate the false and effete ethical
and religious influences, from the wise and true, which alone are
abiding and permanent.

Thus we grope and stumble along through our earthly lives, burdened
with ideas which were set in motion far back in a crude age, and which
were so well adapted to their time that they still vibrate to the
tendencies of our own day. This applies to every department of human
experience, and were it not that we are, as a huge family, better than
our cherished beliefs, higher in the scale of development than these
would seem to indicate, we should still be under the dominion of the
so-called "Dark Ages." The most important and the dearest phase of
human experience must come, of course, through its religious beliefs,
and as they are narrow and superstitious, on the one hand, or grand
with faith and understanding of law, on the other, do we judge of the
status of the individual, the community, and the race; and the advances
made upon this line mark the progress of what we term civilization on
this planet.

There is no time so trying, so full of agony to the soul, as is that
hour when it first begins to doubt the absolute, unquestionable truth
of the creeds it has hitherto blindly accepted, and in which it has
fully believed. Creeds are the swaddling clothes of the soul, and must
inevitably be outgrown and laid aside as the mind of man grows more and
more capable of comprehending the truth which is to set it free from
the trammels of mere blind belief.

It is so comfortable to have our spiritual faith ready made for us, our
paths all mapped out, and our final destiny made plain and sure,
provided only that we remain faithful in our adherence to them as they
are set forth by our parents and spiritual guardians, that when the
great, ever-surging, resistless tidal wave of progress first reaches
the soul, it can only stand in dumb agony, like one upon the seashore
watching its last hope go down beneath the waste of mighty waters.
Torn from its anchorage of inherited beliefs, it is sure to be
tempest-toss