THE EVOLUTION OF RELIGION 185 



dead men's bones, as was believed in the past, but by the 

 united actions of live men's heads and dead men's brains, 

 thoughts, knowledge and experience are we to further evolve 

 virtue. For as I have already pointed out, He apparently 

 intends only to work three miracles in the course of evolution, 

 in the same way as He apparently only gives each one of us 

 three chances in life to decide our fate for good or evil, after 

 which fate rules all the rest of our lives. 



These three miracles are : 



First : When He reversed the action of heat and cold and 

 that of contraction and expansion and weight and density, 

 which are amongst the most fundamental laws of nature. 

 These He reverses when the temperature gets below thirty- 

 nine degrees, but had not this law been entirely reversed, the 

 whole of nature would have stood still, for it is only the 

 expansion of cold that has prevented the entire seas becoming 

 frozen, and has crumbled the rocks to pieces and so produced 

 the soils and made the globe habitable. 



The second miracle is the work of our redemption by men 

 born of women without the co-operation of man, and unless He 

 had worked this miracle it would have been impossible for 

 man to have received the attributes of God the Mother, or to 

 have evolved a mind fit to receive Love, Comprehension or 

 Invention, which alone could prepare the road to the wisdom 

 of understanding. In this way He has demonstrated His 

 power to rule first, all creation, and secondly to rule life 

 and birth. 



The third miracle will be when after mankind has evolved a 

 perfectly wise soul He will prolong life into Immortality .at 

 the end of the coming Epoch of Charity, and so will assert 

 His prerogative to rule Creation, Life and Death. For if my 

 Hypothesis is correct, the aim of creation must be when man- 

 kind attains to perfect wisdom and perfect self-control over 

 his actions, and so destroys folly and becomes able to offer a 

 perfectly finite eternal sweetheart to a perfectly eternal and 

 infinite lover. But apart from these three miracles to mark 

 His prerogative to rule nature, all the rest of creation and 

 evolution is conducted on one set plan and principle, and we 

 cannot expect religion to be any exception, any more than 

 any other form of evolution. Thus as years roll on the in- 

 crease of worldly wisdom may destroy some, and science may 



