ear, and support their dogmas by "revelations," the diverse
interpretations of which have segregated religions into a large number of
sects with no bond of union or basis of agreement.

Competition here, in securing proselytes, differs little, except in name,
from that everywhere in evidence between commercial organizations. It is
hardly "the survival of the fittest," but rather, as everywhere, and in
all ages, the triumph of the most powerful, aggressive, and unscrupulous.
The Roman Hierarchy is still in the lead, with its Pope "infallible," and
anathematizing all progress and enlightenment, under the designation of
"Modernism," and all its energy exerted to perpetuate the "Dark Ages."

It is thus that priestcraft masquerades in the name of religion to enslave
the human soul. Still outside this Babel of religion and science, lie
numberless cults and organizations professing both liberty and
enlightenment along the lines of man's spiritual nature, not one of which
puts forth any _clear and definite theorem_ of the human soul. With mere
assertions, instead of demonstrated facts, and appealing often to the
desire for wealth, health, and comfort in their followers, they often
declare that one has only to "_demand_" these things, in order to have
them. Justice and the law of compensation are often entirely ignored, and
the methods employed are _un_moral, to say the least, almost without
exception, unscientific, and wholly empirical.

Occasionally we find "Leaders," or "Official Heads," whose colossal
ignorance of either moral or spiritual Law, is only equaled by their
monumental egotism, and this does not prevent them from gaining
proselytes, and amassing fortunes in their own name.

It would be difficult to see how many of these cults differ, either in
principle or practice, or in the results wrought out in their disciples,
from the Priestcraft already referred to.

They advertise an open thoroughfare, and seem to promise something for
nothing, but from the vicarious atonement, up or down the scale, the
votaries pay in "mint, anise, and cummin," while ignorantly blind to the
weightier matters of the law.

To one who for half a century has studied these personal and social
problems, and witnessed the rise and fall of many of these cults, from the
Fox Sisters and Spiritualism, to Braid and Hypnotism, while Priestcraft
and Popery, like Tennyson's brook, "go on forever," it all seems pitiful
that mankind must pay so dearl