THE EPOCH OF HOPE 97 



superiority over the animal kingdom. As I have pointed out 

 in the course of my work, religion is the one exception to the 

 laws of creation that marks God's prerogative to rule evolution 

 during the seven days that make up the Epoch of Hope, for 

 the three stages of its conception, birth, and manhood are 

 ushered in, blessed and sealed by the hand of God with the 

 miracles of redemption in a manner in which nothing else has 

 been during these seven days. For its redeemers are the one 

 and only instances of the creation of life and birth without the 

 assistance of man whereby the majesty and love of God be- 

 comes superhumanly visible to the eyes and mind of mankind. 

 But neither man nor nature can create revelation which has 

 lain dormant in nature throughout all ages awaiting the arrival 

 of the fittest moment for its being made clear to the under- 

 standing of the mind of man, as its further development may 

 permit of his being able to comprehend or understand a larger 

 amount of divine wisdom. Revelation is the soul of religion ; 

 so my Table II. is right in this sense in placing Soul in the 

 place assigned to it therein at the time that the evolution of 

 nerves and brain laid the electrical wires and foundation of 

 man's soul. In this sense when God first created mind and 

 brain, he sowed the first seed of soul although the evolution 

 of the mind and soul was to belong to the Epochs of Hope 

 and Charity, not to the physical one of Faith. But Mind, 

 Nerves and Brain are the electrical wires, so to speak, of 

 Thought, Life and Soul. 



But although revelation, which is the seed of religion, is 

 divine and eternal, so that the ethics of religion are indisput- 

 able, it is not so with its teachings which are of human evolu- 

 tion, and therefore like all that is human, doomed to err. For 

 this reason all religions, although they demand our highest 

 veneration and reverence and are the last forms of teaching 

 we should dare to reform or dispute, must nevertheless be re- 

 modelled by science and evolution, unless they wish to stand 

 still and become obsolete so far as their teachings, not their 

 revelations, are concerned. For religion cannot create a revela- 

 tion any more than, without the divine intervention of redemp- 

 tion, man could have become possessed of the mind of woman 

 or any quality thereof, or given birth to a child without the 

 assistance of woman. And but for redemption, the blessings 

 of revelation and religion would have been as tightly closed 



