History of Religious Evolution 741 



we must try to stand outside mundane affairs, look on them 

 impartially as eye-witnesses, and estimate at exact value man 

 as well as other organisms, while they pass in evolutionary 

 sequence. 



In such a procession every organism, according to the most 

 recent phj'^sical view is an aggregate of so much energy cen- 

 tered in and round inert ether particles. Therefore from 

 their increasingly complex molecular structure it can be said 

 that a blue-green non-nucleate alga is greatly and more densely 

 energized than is the highest inorganic body; a nucleate multi- 

 cellular plant is greatly more energized than is the alga; a 

 higher ganghonated invertebrate is an immense advance in 

 molecular complexity, and so in power of perception and re- 

 sponse, on the nucleate plant; an anthropoid ape, in its rich 

 and abundant gray brain substance, is a great advance on 

 the invertebrate; while recent man in his active, varied, and 

 abundant responses to environal stimuli proclaims that his 

 highly complex molecular composition is linked with a like 

 complexity and condensation of energy. 



To the successive phases of organic energizing we have 

 applied the terms biotic, cognitic, cogitic, and spiritic. 



Man's religious advance we believe has been synchronous 

 with his degree of progressive spiritic energizing. And in 

 its application to Christ's teaching and example this is emi- 

 nently true. During the two to three centuries before his 

 appearing, aspiring minds had reached out to the conception 

 of a great world Power, Energy, or Spirit which energized and 

 moved them as well as universal nature. This in reverence 

 they named Ormazd, Yahweh, Theos, or God. And truly, 

 if we, who each represent so much highly conii)lex energy which 

 so acts that it bestows on us our personality, can thereby 

 think, plan, proenviron, and act, is it not likely that this workl 

 and universe contains a greatly higher type and contlensed 

 expression of energy that may be unseen to us as yet, but which 

 permeates the universe.'^ Such is God, the proenvironed and 

 at length realized God of higher and purer Hrahmanism, of 

 Zoroastrianism, of Judaism, and of Platonism. Each religion 



