hat belonged to the past, may be lost.

This manifests itself in all departments of life. I suppose that there
never was an improvement proposed in the world that somebody did not
object to it in the interests of the established order. And yet, if
these people that do not want any changes made had had control of the
world ten thousand years ago, where should we be to-day? We should
still be barbarians in the jungles. For it is because these people have
not been able to keep the world still that we have advanced here and
there in the direction of what we are pleased to call civilization. You
remember, for example, as illustrating this opposition, how the
workingmen, the laborers of the time, a few years ago, in England,
fought against the introduction of machinery. They said machinery was
going to take their work away, it was going to break down the old
industrial order of the world, it was going to make it impossible for
the laborer to get his living. A few machines were to do the world's
work; and the great multitude were to be idle, and, not having anything
to do, were to receive no pay for labor, and consequently were to
starve. This was the cry. The outcome has been that there has been
infinitely more done, a much larger number of laborers employed,
employed less hours in the day, paid higher wages; and in every
direction the condition of the industrial world has been improved. I
speak of this simply as an illustration of this tendency.

When we come to religion, it is perfectly natural that the opposition
here should be bitterer than anywhere else in the world; and it always
has been. If you think of it just a little, if you read the history of
the world a little, you will find that the last thing on earth that
people have been willing to improve has been their religion. And this,
I say, is perfectly natural. Why? Because men have instinctively felt
and rightly felt, as I believe that religion was the most important
thing in human life. They felt that it was the most sacred thing, that
on it depended higher and more permanent interests than on anything
else; and they have naturally been timid, naturally shrunk from change,
with the fear that changing the theories and the practices and the
thoughts was going to endanger the thing itself. They have said, We
will hold on, at any rate, to these reverences, these worships, these
precious trusts, these hopes; and we will hold on to the vessels in
which we have carried t