THE IDEA OF GOD 25 



rudimentary form. His progress in all the social phe- 

 nomena of life (language, intelligence, invention, prop- 

 erty, civilization), seems to be conditioned rather on 

 his worship of certain evolutionary ideals which his 

 ever-increasing intelligence allows him to hand down 

 from generation to generation, thus accumulating for 

 the good of the race a constantly growing fund of 

 mental, moral, and spiritual truth. Starting with the 

 lowly yet mysterious power of spiritualizing the brute 

 forces of nature, man rises to the deification of the 

 moral ideas which the conditions of life compel within 

 him, until finally he evolves the sublime conception of 

 God. 



THE IDEA OF GOD 



This idea of God in the heart and mind and soul of 

 man, apparently arising out of the very conditions of 

 life itself, would seem to be the final answer to the riddle 

 of creation, to this sphinx of human destiny. It is the 

 supreme evolutionary ideal, the ideal which every 

 right-thinking parent appears to consider it necessary 

 to first teach his or her child while the mind is yet im- 

 pressionable, so that it may acquire the very nature of 

 an instinct. In the history of our race, the idea of God 

 seems to have been slowly unfolding itself from the 

 beginning. It would appear to have been a progressive 

 revelation, a gradual unfolding of truth, the result of 

 an upward evolution; or, as Paul expressed it when 

 speaking to the Greeks on Mars Hill, the purpose of 

 creation has been " that men should seek God, if haply 



