THE EVOLUTION OF RELIGION 179 



wrong that is not foolish, and all that is mean and unjust 

 must be foolish, for sooner or later it will bring its own 

 punishment. To God who rules the fatality of your existence 

 you owe the best use of your time, energy, brains and talents, 

 and the use you make of them for the good, not of yourself, 

 but of your neighbour, and for the community which will 

 decide, not your wealth that will be decided by whether or 

 no wealth will make you more or less useful to the commu- 

 nity but your happiness in this life and the chances your 

 children and you yourself will have throughout the years of 

 eternity of being possessed of the Kingdom of Heaven, that 

 is to say, the ability to participate in the enjoyment of those 

 who live after you. These are the great lessons evolution 

 teaches, and if I have written anything that will impress these 

 lessons more strongly on your mind than if you had not read 

 this little work, or that offers a greater inducement to you to 

 aim at higher ideals than you otherwise would have tried to 

 attain, or than your present religious beliefs inculcate, I 

 recommend you to add such to your existing beliefs, and let 

 any such benefits make some atonement for such parts of my 

 work as you do not approve of or which may appear offensive 

 to your individual mind or beliefs. But because in this chapter 

 it has been necessary to show the probable material forces that 

 have had to do their share in evolving those beliefs and have 

 created in you a mind capable of receiving them, please remem- 

 ber, that this does not lessen the fact that the forces 

 of divine inspiration are most probably just as great 

 factors in your becoming possessed of them as ever you have 

 considered it, in the past, under other modes of interpretation. 

 To me it implies that evolution only proves how utterly 

 we are dependant on the will of our creator and his decision 

 as to whether we have merited the gift of right thought and 

 right understanding to be able to profit by the graces of divine 

 inspiration that from time to time he may vouchsafe to man- 

 kind. So do not draw the conclusion that I wish to lower 

 religion or your beliefs in your esteem. Nothing would give 

 me greater pain. Try and realise, as I do, that all the reli- 

 gions of the past are but a portion of the divine light of revela- 

 tion struggling to shine through the mist of past superstitions 

 till it can reach your soul, so soon as evolution evolves that 

 soul sufficiently to receive their full light. Just as the light 



