176 THE THRESHOLD OF EVOLUTION 

 of modern history. Taking England, we see the Christian 

 religion come to the help of government till the reign of Henry 

 VI. when the religious leaders had become the rulers of so 

 much wealth and power that they became corrupt, and so great 

 was this evil amongst the trade institutes of those days 

 the monasteries that the Wars of the Roses are instituted to 

 establish a new departure in the rule of Commerce, for up till 

 now Commerce has been under the rule of religion. This 

 develops Protestantism out of Catholicism, which in its turn 

 degenerates until the reign of Charles I., when Pro- 

 testantism has become as corrupt as Catholicism was, and it is 

 in its turn replaced by Puritanism, so as to abolish the trades- 

 unionism of alder manic guilds. But as this does not suit the 

 religious views of the community Puritanism returns 

 to a reformed order of Protestantism after the wars of Crom- 

 well. So all through the history of religion, new religions 

 crop up or new branches of old ones which from time to time 

 become embroiled in state issues and thus bring about their 

 downfall and a new form of religion is started, better suited 

 to the demands of the time and age ; or a corrupt government 

 is through religious contest replaced by an improved one. 



But as the reader will perhaps now comprehend, our know- 

 ledge does not all get destroyed as it did in the past. 

 Wholesale destruction of science is not likely to happen to the 

 same extent as has been the case. But in the present war 

 we have seen enough of German vandalism to realise that 

 until after the future evolution of national peace, this is not 

 altogether a thing of the past. Some such religious and state 

 contest must have banished the Mosaic emigration from India 

 and so it lost all records of its early religious history, to 

 abolish which presumably the subsequent governments of 

 India destroyed all records of her past magnificent religious 

 developments, and we have to go and hunt for them in the 

 rubbish heaps of the newer religions of Persia, Egypt, Greece, 

 Rome and Palestine. Then thereafter Christianity in its 

 bigotry destroyed the writings of the Pagan authors of Rome, 

 Greece and Egypt, as Rome destroyed the records of Jerusalem, 

 and Mahomet those of early Christianity when he conquered 

 Constantinople. So we must turn out and ransack the homes 

 of Pagan religion, and all religions in our efforts to arrive at 

 the truth, finding, if we look in the right spirit, fresh lights 



