698 Causes and Course of Organic Evolution 



We would consider then that the rehgious world of today 

 has reached its highest position, not by divine revelation of 

 gods or of a God to man, nor by the appearance of any one 

 who was God and man in blended existence, but solely by 

 earnest proenvironal effort of one or of a few human souls 

 who have successively lived through the ages. Each of these 

 has striven to combine into one resultant line of teaching all 

 that seemed best and most satisfying to his tribe, to his nation, 

 or to the world, as inherited from preceding generations. This 

 is what written, oral, inscribed, and archseologic liistory more 

 and more clearly teaches, backward into the dim and receding 

 millennia of the past. This also alone explains to us the grades 

 of religious evolution still observable, or which history clearly 

 gives us the records of. In view of what is stated above, we 

 would share to a large extent the views of Benjamin Kidd 

 (217: 132) and Chamberlain {218: 1: 174) as to the immense 

 impetus that the world has received from the teachings of Christ 

 and his sincere followers. For, of all the world literature that 

 bears on the mento-moral or social, and the spiritic or religious 

 family life of man, none in the writer's estimate approach 

 such sublime and yearning passages as the twelfth and the 

 fifteenth chapters of Romans, the fifth chapter of Galatians, 

 the latter chapters of Ephesians, the fourth chapter of Phil- 

 ippians, the third chapter of Colossians, and the second epistle 

 to Timothy. These embody a few of the applied principles 

 of Christ's teaching, as commended by his greatest follower. 



Such great sweeps of high moral and religious aspiration 

 have taken hold of the minds of men during the past two mil- 

 lennia, and have enobled them in the greatest and most ad- 

 vancing centers of civilization. The great religious waves 

 that have successively swept over Europe and America under 

 the teachings of Augustine, of Chrysostom, of Columlm, of 

 Huss, of Wycliffe, of Francis of Assisi, of Luther, of Melanch- 

 thon, and Wesley, as well as others of more recent date, were 

 the motor expressions of far-reaching proenvironal resultants 

 which developed by cumulation of all the highest views suc- 

 cessively held regarding human life, and its relation to a great 



