pon any particular form of religion. Faith
has been found to subsist and flourish under various creeds and all
manners of worship, in all stages of civilization. All that it wants is
something to shelter and sustain and encourage it, in its struggles
against the baser instincts. Any religion which does this, by appealing
to the imagination and inspiring whole-souled belief, might be
considered satisfactory in any given community.

The next question, therefore, which we are entitled to ask ourselves is
this:

After science has succeeded in eating into and breaking down the
particular temple in which our fundamental faith had found a refuge,
what fitting substitute has it been able to discover or devise, in order
to meet this universal requirement?

The nearest approach to a scientific answer appears to be the theory of
evolution, which informs man that, instead of being a special and
majestic creation of an all-wise Almighty, as he had so foolishly and
ignorantly imagined, he can consider himself a remote and more or less
accidental, development of a protoplasm; and more immediately, the
lineal descendant of the ape, to whom he still bears a close
resemblance, in a scientific way.

As there is nothing about an ape, or a protoplasm to be accepted as a
haven of refuge, science points to another conclusion. (And in quoting
science, here or elsewhere, let it be borne in mind that I make no claim
of speaking as a scientific expert, but am merely attempting to give the
general gist and point-of-view as it affects the average intelligence.
In such a general way, this, then, is what science says:)

"If you must worship something, instead of taking a figment of the
imagination, why not pick out something real and established, about
whose insistence there can be no doubt--the most logical and admirable
thing on earth--your own self and your scientifically enlightened
intellect? If you need a creed of some sort, to take the place of the
antiquated one which science has broken down, why not accept a pleasing
and simple creed which is entirely logical? Let your conduct be governed
at all times by your own self-interest and the rule of reason. For
everything that happens in this world, there must be a cause; and for
every act of a living thing, there must be a motive, either conscious or
unconscious. These are universal facts which have been adequately
established by scientific research. In the case of an individual man,
the onl