GOVERNMENT AND SCIENCE 199 



devote to study and the acquirement of knowledge during a 

 busy life, my attempt is but a weak one. I will only try and 

 make the best attempt I can. We can none of us do more 

 than our best, and live in hope that God will grant me life, 

 strength and brains, i& do better at some future date ; and that 

 wiser minds may complete what I can only commence. 



Through the course of its revolutions and history, every 

 form of religion in its turn has been doomed by Almighty God 

 to fade and die, for religions, governments or empires are no 

 exception to the laws of life, death, rebirth and rejuvenescence, 

 than are any other evolutions of creation, such as knowledge, 

 science or animal existence. So in the past religion after 

 religion has been doomed to death and destruction to evolve 

 better systems of state government, and governments in the 

 same way have died to give birth to higher forms of religious 

 beliefs, not always more correct in their teachings, but as a 

 rule clearer and more explicit as regards some important 

 dogma of revelation that is, at that particular age, the most 

 necessary religious evolution of the day, and always and in 

 every case better adapted to the requirements and advance- 

 ments of the particular community in question, as one form 

 of government gives place to another, or one kingdom over- 

 comes another. This has given rise in the past to religious 

 persecutions, and it will be one of our duties in the future to 

 abolish state wars, as we have already abolished to a large 

 extent the religious persecutions of the past. 



All these persecutions were seldom in reality waged 

 against religious convictions, but were far more often in 

 reality due to the fact that religious communities had 

 neglected to enforce some necessary principle of state govern- 

 ment, or to enforce some necessary form of self-restraint, 

 or else some new form of legal government, or were destroying 

 some necessary form of legal government or new form of virtue 

 that a fresh stage of evolution required, or in its efforts to 

 evolve some new, real or apparent but impractical social re- 

 form much needed, but little understood, or that appeared 

 to be much needed by the mass of the people to correct some 

 evil on the part of its rulers, or some crime of the masses 

 that the rulers sought to remove and thus got embroiled in 

 the political contests of the da}'. For religion is in reality 

 only the voice of the people clamouring for or against the 



