232 HERBERT SPENCER’S SERVICE TO RELIGION 
All religions agree in the two following assertions, 
one of which is of speculative and one of which is of 
ethical importance. One of them serves to sustain 
and harmonize 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 asser- 
tions 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 furthest 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 assertions 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 star courses in its 
mighty orbit, and not a sparrow falls to the ground. 
Matthew Arnold once summed up these two propo- 
sitions very well when he defined God as “an eternal 
Power, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness.” 
This twofold assertion, that there is an eternal Power 
that is not ourselves, and that this Power makes for 
righteousness, is to be found, either in a rudimentary 
or in a highly developed state, in all known religions. 
In such religions as those of the Esquimaux or of 
