THE EVOLUTION OF RELIGION 299 



who hold that all religions are false except one, and that the one they 

 themselves have come to adopt. The Jew does this who asserts that God 

 by a perpetual covenant, recorded in the Old Testament, has made his 

 own race the sole repository of his will. The Islamite does this who re- 

 gards the Koran alone as the sole guide to truth and life. And the 

 Christian who sees in the New Testament the only source of religious 

 faith and practise belongs to the same class. No writer has given us 

 a more vivid picture of the erroneous way of regarding the religions of 

 the World than Milton in his " Paradise Lost." That all religions ex- 

 cept the Christian are pure inventions of the Devil to ensnare the un- 

 wary is his fundamental thought. 



This position has been the source of untold mischief and suffering 

 in the past, and immensely impedes the progress of mankind at present. 

 It is contrary to actual fact, and is based upon the false assumption 

 that man possesses the ability to acquire absolute certainty in religious 

 matters, a thing which is denied to him in every other sphere. 



The truth is that man's religion develops as he himself develops. 

 The steps in the evolution of religion are the steps in his own mental 

 advancement. There is never a time after he comes into conscious 

 possession of his powers as a person when he is without religion, and 

 there is no possibility of his outgrowing religion. He does not get his 

 religion out of any book, but primarily out of the experiences of his 

 own mind and heart. The experiences of others are a help to him only 

 as he reproduces them in his ovm. The more sensual he is, the more 

 sensual will be his religion, and the more rational and pure his life is, 

 the more refined and spiritual will his religion become. In other 

 words, the more of a man he is himself, the loftier will his conception 

 be of the Maker and Sustainer of the universe. 



