EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 



agreement. And these two points of agreement 

 will be admitted by modern civilized men to be 

 of far greater importance than the innumerable 

 differences of detail. All religions agree in the 

 two following assertions, one of which is of 

 speculative and one of which is of ethical im- 

 port. One of them serves to sustain and har- 

 monize our thoughts about the world we live in 

 and our place in that world ; the other serves 

 to uphold us in our efforts to do each what we 

 can to make human life more sweet, more full 

 of goodness and beauty, than we find it. The 

 first of these assertions is the proposition that 

 the things and events of the world do not exist 

 or occur blindly or irrelevantly, but that all, 

 from the beginning to the end of time, and 

 throughout the farthest sweep of illimitable 

 space, are connected together as the orderly 

 manifestations of a divine Power, and that this 

 divine Power is something outside of ourselves, 

 and upon it our own existence from moment to 

 moment depends. The second of these asser- 

 tions is the proposition that men ought to do 

 certain things, and ought to refrain from doing 

 certain other things ; and that the reason why 

 some things are wrong to do and other things 

 are right to do is in some mysterious but very 

 real way connected with the existence and nature 

 of this divine Power, which reveals itself in every 

 great and every tiny thing, without which not a 

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