504 COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. f^T. ni. 



gone before it. Tf I could not now perceive that what was 

 once true to me, and true to the world, was true for ever, in 

 relation to what had to come after it, I do not deny to myself 

 •■hat I should inevitably fall away to cease believing at all 

 henceforth both in myself and in the world. Yes : if I could 

 not see in relation to Christianity, just as truly as was seen 

 by the master-spirits of that religion in relation to Judaism, 

 that neither of this later form of realization 'can one jot 

 or tittle pass away, until all be fulfilled' in the newly- 

 arriving doctrines of General Eeligion, — never, I am con- 

 vinced, could the latter take any real hold upon me : never, 

 in fact, could it he a religion to me." ^ 



To those who still adhere to the sharp distinctions charac- 

 teristic of the statical view of things, who carry into their 

 estimate of religious opinions the conception of fixity of 

 species, it may seem absurd or sophistical in us to assimilate 

 with Christianity a system of thought which has entirely 

 thrown off the mythologic symbols wherein Christianity has 

 hitherto been clothed and whereby it is customarily recog- 

 nized as possessing an individuality of its own. To such it 

 naturally seems that the giving up of the symbol is the 

 giving up of the reality, and that the critical attitude of him 

 who has given up the symbol must be an attitude of radical 

 hostility. But now, as the crowning result of the whole 

 argument, we are enabled to show how the dynamical view 

 of things disposes of this paradox. He who brings to his 

 estimate of religious opinions a Darwinian habit of mind, 

 must understand that a sudden and radical alteration of 

 Christianity into something else is as impossible as the 

 sudden and radical change of one type of organism into 

 another. He will see that, while form after form has 

 perished, the Life remains, incarnated in newer and highei 

 forms. That which is fundamental in Christianity is not 

 the mythologic superstratum, but the underlying spiritua 

 * Miss Hennell, Present Eeligion, pp. 50, 51. 



