ks and
investigates, he is in danger of exciting the wrath of God.
Consequently religion has been of the slowest growth. Now, in most
departments of knowledge, man has advanced; and coming back to the
original statement--a desire to harmonize all that we know--there
is a growing desire on the part of intelligent men to have a religion
fit to keep company with the other sciences.

Our creeds were made in times of ignorance. They suited very well
a flat world, and a God who lived in the sky just above us and who
used the lightning to destroy his enemies. This God was regarded
much as a savage regarded the head of his tribe--as one having the
right to reward and punish. And this God, being much greater than
a chief of the tribe, could give greater rewards and inflict greater
punishments. They knew that the ordinary chief, or the ordinary
king, punished the slightest offence with death. They also knew
that these chiefs and kings tortured their victims as long as the
victims could bear the torture. So when they described their God,
they gave this God power to keep the tortured victim alive forever
--because they knew that the earthly chief, or the earthly king,
would prolong the life of the tortured for the sake of increasing
the agonies of the victim. In those savage days they regarded
punishment as the only means of protecting society. In consequence
of this they built heaven and hell on an earthly plan, and they
put God--that is to say the chief, that is to say the king--on a
throne like an earthly king.

Of course, these views were all ignorant and barbaric; but in that
blessed day their geology and astronomy were on a par with their
theology. There was a harmony in all departments of knowledge, or
rather of ignorance. Since that time there has been a great advance
made in the idea of government--the old idea being that the right
to govern came from God to the king, and from the king to his
people. Now intelligent people believe that the source of authority
has been changed, and that all just powers of government are derived
from the consent of the governed. So there has been a great advance
in the philosophy of punishment--in the treatment of criminals.
So, too, in all the sciences. The earth is no longer flat; heaven
is not immediately above us; the universe has been infinitely
enlarged, and we have at last found that our earth is but a grain
of sand, a speck on the great shore of the infinite. Conseq