Chapter IX
We are able to trace the evolution of the world’s sacred writings and the reception and veneration they have enjoyed among the peoples of the earth since the dawn of history. It is rather easy to discern the real advance in intellectual conception which marks the product of each succeeding Renaissance introduced as the new replaced the old order of things. Civilization, marked by religious conception, has not evolved in a smooth and even course. Every advance has been literally fought by the then orthodox, and the new thought has ever been denominated “heresy” and the heretic has been punished in the most cruel fashion that the fertile imaginations in the established order could muster.
It is a most commendable trait of human character that men are not quick to give up a treasured idea or inclined to be moved easily by the reformer—it is, of course, far safer for the common good that the new should be carefully analyzed before allowing it to replace the old tried and consoling doctrines of the fathers. The tenacity with which this principle has marked human thinking was verily the prime reason for the necessity of miracles in the establishment of every regime or system of religion in the past, and miracles would still wield an enormous influence in any new movement even in our present generation with a large percent of the people. But the ever increasing number who are guided by reason and logic and not by the mysterious (?) and supernatural continue to reduce the importance of the miracle worker in the promulgation of advanced thought. One of the beauties (?) in the picture of this evolution is in the established fact that the heretics who shattered precedents and offended the orthodox became the orthodox in the next step of progress. It will always be thus. Every spirit of intellectual evolution has been established on the ashes of the past, which accounts for the further fact that every succeeding system incorporated what was conceived as the best in the old. The systems of Egyptian religions had experienced several such revisions with the typical fluctuations of orthodoxy and heresy before Osiris (?) was created, according to our, now, orthodox chronology. The Book of the Dead was hoary with age and Zoroaster’s theology had given consolation to teeming millions before the Sinai code was promulgated, and, yet, our New Testament, the latest and best of all, incorporates, among its veritable gems of beauty, the central thoughts of three of these great monuments—the greatest and best the world had ever known in the times that they governed the thinking of men.
So we see that the evolution of thought includes a peculiar reverence for the trends of the past, just as evolution in material things depends upon what has been—when unhindered, both perpetuates the best in the forbears.
When I criticize the pressure of recounted miracles for the purpose of forcing acceptance of any system of religion, I feel that I want to excuse the very earliest reformers on the grounds of the great ignorance of the people of the times. And when I do that, I also comprehend the almost necessity that the next ”heretical” reformers found it exceedingly difficult to impress their higher culture upon the adherents of the old order, without resort to folk-lore stories of miracles of even more convincing style, and emanating from a higher type of god. This kind of campaign also continued its evolution until almost any body could personally contact his god, report conversations, even bring back handicraft samples of great excellence that were graven (?) by the actual finger of the God, in person. First, none but the Gods could do the miracles, but later this greatest of all accomplishments was carried on with remarkable success by mere men. Here we are able to trace the processes of the evolution of miracles down through the ages to our own sacred creeds—waxing ever more wonderful and awe inspiring. Early gods made it thunder or caused the sun or moon to become eclipsed to impress the ignorant people. It is, indeed, most interesting as well as instructive to trace the evolution of human thinking by the masterful influence of a conception of something in man that forever craves the answer to those momentous questions that shall remain throughout all time as the most important: What is it all about? What means this life on earth? Is there any explanation as to what next? Man seems to be the sole creature in all earth’s countless species of life that has ever bothered about the answers to such questions. And man’s answer has assumed many forms. The scientific research into the story of the origin of species, or the trends of development in the kingdoms of animals and plants, while most entrancing, is not as clearly outlined as the evolution of the intellectual mutations. There is something surely worth our serious contemplation in the fact that in some ten or twelve thousand years the human comprehension has made such tremendous strides. A dozen millenniums may appear to be quite a long period to come from the Dawn man, but it, probably, required many times that many years to make an orchid from slime. When once the mind of man takes an epoch-making step, he moves much more rapidly than anything in the lower kingdoms, and when a certain stage has been reached the progress becomes more and more rapid—Man has now reached such a high degree of mental acumen that every day brings forth some new marvel of thought and invention—and the pace is now so rapid that it sets a hard task for one who would keep informed. More progress has been made during the last century than had been made throughout all time prior thereto, In the social and material setup, while it was not accomplished all at once, it has been the custom to discard the old, (though they may be called our schoolmasters to bring us to the present fullness of living),when the highest intelligence demonstrated the desirability of leaving the crude and unreasonable, for the better. But what principle has not worked so well in the most important thing of all—may be its very infinite importance has actually been the cause of slowness of change. Of course, great improvements have been attained in the spiritual (the religious) world, but we cling to the old with so much more tenacity when we enter the spiritual realm. Surely we can stand on the last chapter of Revelations, pull the cord and ring the bell on the first chapter of Genesis—even more we may hear a faint chime on the temple of Amenhotep I, three or four thousand years ago.
There may be some “missing links” in both Evolutions, but they parallel each other, not only in accounting for the same things, but in the mode of mutations (?) – First the theological was far in advance but, owing to its own habits of being satisfied with the old, and trying always to utterly destroy anything new, it has been passed in this race with Science, until now it is so far back in the dust that a complete renovation seems in order. It is admitted, frankly, that the public utterances of the Religionists have recently portrayed a most remarkable trend toward intelligent revision, yet they lean for their support upon the same old miracle-working theology. There is little difference, between the God that we worship in our most modernized churches, and the God that is visualized by the scientifically trained minds. But if the religionist is wholly conscientious in the claim for a belief in the scientific idea of evolution, it is absolutely necessary to give up the Garden of Eden theology which has come down to our generation as sole basis for the necessity of the still older human sacrifice on Calvary. I continue to insist that if man’s evolution was anything like how we now believe it was, that he never enjoyed any pinnacle of perfection from which to fall, but while he scaled the crests and floundered troughs of the waves, he has continued, and will continue to advance toward perfection. Be he so woefully distant from such blissful paradise now, he is nearer to it than he has ever been before.
To accept this idea of unending change on every hand requires but to accept what we must observe every day of our lives, all nature exhibits this eternal succession of mutations—Nothing remains to-day exactly as it was in any of the yesterdays—This is bound to be the law of nature’s God until perfection is reached, when no further change can be scheduled. Perfection can never turn back in retrograde, else it lacked in a very essential characteristic the elements of perfection—It would show prima facia evidence of imperfection in the very first drop toward imperfection. This same truth, extended, would nullify the very corner stone of our present orthodoxy—that man was created perfect, and then, so precipitately, apostatized to the lowest level of degradation—into total depravity—in so much that every thought of his mind and every meditation of his heart was evil continually. There was none (?) good,--no, not one.
It may produce considerable shock to our dignity and sense of personal approbation to turn from some deeply cherished dogma which we may have, often openly defended, but, after all, just such change toward demonstrated truth is the most profound evidence of strength of character. To refrain from acceptance of the logical deductions of our own judgment, is the strongest evidence of cowardly weakness. If the truth hurts, there is bound to be something materially wrong with the fortifications of our faith—a faith that will not shrink, though faced by every foe, no matter what may be its predicate, is not the object of my appeal. I would not hope to be of any assistance whatever. I would appeal to the millions who are willing to minutely analyze the evidence upon which their faith is predicated, governed only by the sense of reason and sound judgment. There is no question of the great number of human beings to-day who belong to this latter class.
The apostasy from the old order that has developed during the last few decades has caused a lot of the unrest in the world. Many who enter the transition stage are prone to announce disbelief in everything, and are seriously inclined toward a reckless indifference toward everything. No doubt is has led to outright lawlessness, to all that is included in the “jazz age” when an active but restless mind has reason to doubt the stringencies in the established schedule of rewards and punishments, that have been the governing force of youth and the unthinking—There is liable to be an unholy reaction—it is well expressed in the old proverb that “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”—This transition is inevitable, if there is any progress. There is, positively, no way around. The same idea is manifest in many examples of human progress. No boy can become a man without passing through adolescence, a period that has well been labeled the “dangerous age”—It is impossible to leap from ignorance to enlightenment. It, like everything else, comes within the universal scope of evolution. Any change in theological conception must bear the burdens that come from a peculiar mixture of the two or more systems—There is nothing worse than floundering in the wrong element. Strychnine is not poisonous in its native habitat. Disease producing germs would remain innocent and harmless if they were never removed from the meadow where their nature would place them. When they get mixed up with animal cells they begin a struggle which upsets the regular functioning for the parts involved. Christianity—whose very excellence over every other system ever comprehended by man is acknowledged, had, noticeably, lost its controlling influence among men, due, as a matter of fact, to the restlessness and unfixedness of thinking that are consigruent upon the dangers of transition from the odd to the new order of theology.
What is evidently great evil, may be necessary to sturdy the wholesome development—It may require a blow between the eyes to set us to sober thinking. The theological systems of the world have to become horribly disjointed before they can be made over. The present woeful and mangled state existing among those who advocate the completeness of the Christian system is further reflected in the unstable and warbling (?) social and political wreckage. Rottenness as well as ignorance will crumble the sacred walls of even a holy city. There is a legitimate cause for everything—physical or metaphysical, and everything that is, or ever was, is or was the best that could result from the cause which produced it, for it is, or was, the only thing that said cause could produce.
The present transitional status, no doubt, was initiated by scientific research and study, the results of which have been accepted in part, at least, by the best thinkers among the exponents of theology, who, in turn, have, thank God, so emasculated the hoary theologies that modern thought has advanced rapidly during the last three decades. Troubles resulted? Surely it was inevitable beyond cavil, but the sooner we get through the age of instability, the better it will be for all.
Grave disturbances of necessity, followed the crucifixion of his Satanic majesty and the obliteration of his old and heretofore well established habitat—Hell—with its super-heated furnaces, stoked with sulphur, as obnoxious as it was hot. Highly intelligent preachers took away this apparent bugaboo, but it is easy to see that it also removed one of the principle restraining features of the established regime. Many sermons have been presented laden with an effort to explain away the miracles, by accounting for them as natural phenomena in the presence of marked ignorance. Still others have minimized the virgin birth, and so on, and any reader may add from his own knowledge a great many changes in modern theology. But there is too much of the old superstition still revered by these same “modernistics” to allow the perfect working of this absolutely perfect law of Earth’s Creator.
In the annihilation of hell, it is impossible to retain heaven, else we destroy the cornerstone of our whole temple—the equilibrium of opposites. And if Satan is stricken from the picture, it delivers a mortal blow to the God of the Bible, by the same token. Hell may be defined, by the gentle mind, as anything else but a seething furnace, and heaven may not be paved with pure gold, and all the other material excellence may be non-existent, but if we insist that one is real, it is next to the impossible—it is illogical—to disclaim the reality of the other. If some among men are to be rewarded as a consequence of well-spent lives, those who have been less active in righteous living certainly should receive less desirable rewards. Thus we must have some system of grading—such laws are ever held in the natural kingdom, and the most logical deductions indicate that the spiritual domain follows in an unbroken policy—an extension rather than something entirely apart—thus the spiritual is entirely natural. Many of our time-honored teachings, including much of what is credited to Jesus of Nazareth, have depended upon the patent {Patient?} operation of what we call the natural laws to explain the phenomena of the spiritual realm.
If evolution has any valuable significance, whatever, it does seem logical that it is set to continue forever. It started with chaos (we have been taught to believe), but it is a much more beautiful and comprehensive picture to use the term God, who cannot be classified as chaos. In his very potentialities is contained all the building materials now in the whole of the universe. Protoplasm, if you want to call it that. We may name it “star dust” or any other nomenclature that has ever been suggested, but it always means the same—all the chemical elements that constitute all the myriads of worlds in the universe to-day existed then. There has never been any increase or any diminution in the number of elements, nor of their volume. If one thing in all nature grows (increases in size) by ‘adding’ material elements something has to diminish. This change is the very life of nature. Let us call it the spirit of the universe. There is, literally, “nothing new under the sun,” except new forms made up from the same old materials that have ever existed in the store house of God. If star dust once represented all that was in the material universe, it contained all that is now contained in the billions of worlds that are known to occupy space. It is a fixed law of God—more immutable than the law of the Medes and Persians—that every one of these elements will behave every time and always in the same way when placed in the same environment. If hydrogen and oxygen, in certain proportion and in certain environment, will produce water one time, it is impossible that they might produce wine at another time. And the same certainty throughout the whole schedule of nature. Not just for to-day, but it has always been so, and is bound to ever continue the same constancy. If it were not just that way there could be nothing gained by the study of the natural philosophies. Such fixed behavioristics includes the characteristic of change. (no, it is not paradoxical) This urge, or, at least, inclination to change position is the fundamental law of life and growth—but it does not disturb the established premise that everything continues to behave the same way, when in like environments.
It is by the contemplation of this law of beautiful constancy, that we are enabled to decipher what has been throughout all the millenniums of the past, as well as to project our vision deep into the future. No one claims that all the details of evolution are, at present, understood, Nor can any one lay claim to the understanding of all the recorded pronouncements of the Bible. The Theory of Evolution, even at its present development, is easier to support by known facts, than are the fantastic claims set forth in the Bible. In fact the Theory of Evolution is already so staunchly supported by Nature’s own record, that it is accorded a place of honor in the minds of men. Nobody argues any more against the origin of species by mutations, due to changing environments. It is more or less commonly accepted that man is the progeny of something that simulated man, and, yet, was only anthropoid (man-like) and so on back through all time his remote ancestors came toward what he now is, by a series of countless mutations occupying still more countless years of time.
The greatest source of mental tragedy that has lingered with me for a long time lies in the unshakeable fact that this, now well-established picture of nature’s mode of progress, can not be laid out in any way, conceivable to my mind, so as to harmonize with Bible Theology. And I feel that many thousands of other mere mortals have had to face the same disturbing dilemma. Nothing, then, can hold a more important position in our meditations, or furnish a more driving force to stimulate our pursuit of truth, than the inspiring hope that we may find portrayed in the library of natural laws, the most logical answer to that most profound of all questions—what is man’s destiny? Or, is there a reasonable and perfectly logical basis upon which rests our hope of immortality. I am convinced that such a consummation is clearly forecast in the sacred pages of Mother Nature’s open book.
Somewhere in the progress of the evolution of man there appeared a comprehension of the indestructibility of matter. Such an idea, naturally, was extended to a vague conception which included the continuity of the highest form or combination of matter, which was represented on earth by man. We may, easily, trace the development of this primeval philosophy of life through a few centuries, but are not able to go back very far, as time goes. The first concrete manifestations of this hope of a future existence for man, comes to us from what we call ancient Egypt.
Nobody knows how long the practice of placing food and other favorite articles in the tombs had been followed before the internment of the few whose silent abodes have been opened and examined—those whose story has been so revealed carry us back little more than three thousand years, but no argument is required to convince us that the custom necessarily had existed a very long time before reaching the stage manifested by such magnificence as has been discovered in the tombs of the Kings. There can be no other explanation of such procedure, particularly the store of food, than that they possessed some kind of hope or anticipation that the interred, mummified body had, at least, a chance of returning to life, with its characteristic of getting hungry. And the human trait (not at all ignoble) which is, to our generation, and I would conclude continued through all intervening generations a very solemn formality, led friends and neighbors to do many acts of kindly consideration which they felt would be pleasing to the departed in case their bodies should ever be revivified.
This was, apparently, the dawn of the anticipation and the expectation of the resurrection of the body—with all its former parts in positions as they were during life. The resurrection of the body finally evolved into a very real religious dogma, which seems never to have been universally accepted, but which persists to our time as a fundamental institution in the sincere philosophies of life revered by millions.
We should reek (?) no criticisms concerning this conception—it but states the case of Evolution so clearly that that there is no place for quibbling over the very steps that mark man’s advance.
Judaism, the immediate predecessor to our Christianity, and from which we have borrowed more than from any other, recorded no concrete evidence of a hope of immortality in the earliest propagation of the system. “That thou mayest live long in the land,” and, “That the Lord thy God shall prosper thee” stand among the high lights of the hopes predicated upon the observance of the law of Moses. In later records, however, there is plenty of evidence of the hope of the resurrection of the body, but instead of its general acceptance, it served as the principal bone of contention that divided the worshipers of the God of Abraham into two schools—the Pharisees and the Sadducees—The Pharisees upholding the dogma of the resurrection of the body, while the Sadducees denied any such phenomenon. It is not clear whether or not the Sadducees accepted the miraculous resurrections performed by the priests, such as were accredited to Elisha, when he came in late at night, to retire, and found the dead body of a lad in his bed, whereupon he stretched himself upon the corpse, and, it would appear from the record, performed artificial respiration by mouth-to-mouth insufflation—Such folk-lore stories as this, however, again, mark the progress of evolution of the idea of the resurrection of the dead.
The Christian system marks a great advance in its conception—while its continuation rests upon the old resurrection of the body, the old corpse is to be changed into a spiritual body—The raising of the same old body continued as a necessary part of the phenomenon, and while it was part of the conception that all bodies would be called forth about the same time—this was not quite conclusive for when St. John, the divine was in exile on Patmus, he announced a wonderful Theophany in which he was permitted to take a good look into the holy city, and he says he saw one hundred forty and four thousand, who had endured the tribulations of this life on earth, and who had “washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb”. These had already had their resurrections and were basking in the glories and supreme loveliness of the immediate presence of God, the father, in the new Jerusalem. Of course, some noted theologians have found, and very eloquently proclaimed, the explanation for this apparent irregularity—These, twelve thousand from each of the twelve tribes of Israel, were the ones who were resurrected at the same time Jesus came forth from the tomb—many of these had been seen on the streets of Jerusalem on that memorable day, but no census was taken until John saw them in his most marvelous of all Theophanies.
It is apparent that it is not easy to determine, with certainty, whether the, now, nearly universally acknowledged hope of immortality rests upon the teachings we get in childhood, which certainly proceed from the records of past and present theologies, or whether it has a basic support in the natural evolution of man. I am thoroughly convinced that it is an integral element of the very soul of man. It might be argued that “the wish is father to the thought—maybe so, but whence came the wish? Nothing has ever existed, not even a wish or a thought, without a legitimate cause, and that cause could have produced nothing else. There is, then, a legitimate reason for the very first conception of such a hope. It could be nothing but the normal extension of man’s potentialities, in the evolution of the intellectual—the spiritual—the ego. There has been evolved in man something new. Something not found in any other corporal life on earth—This something is very complex—much more comprehensive in the human animal in which it resides. It is the real man. We are justified in the claim that “this body is not I—I live in this body”. This claim cannot be made until the tenant “I” has grown to the capability of recognizing its own individuality—It is as much the product of growth as is the body. Its proportions are not limited by the size or frailties of the body in which it develops, even if its material manifestations are so limited. – This characteristic is what makes it impossible for a fellow-man to measure its form, or to judge its possibilities. One can measure all the lineaments of the body, but nobody, however wise, can reckon the potentialities of another’s soul or ego. It is the connection with the infinite. It is the something that shall be born into eternity. It, of course, may be still-born, following the immutable law of nature. It certainly is possible, by the same token that this, developing, internal entity may be well nourished or it may mortally suffer from malnutrition—This sets the stage for the dramatization of the gestation of the spiritual, in the natural world—Extension of Nature’s laws until they are projects into the infinite.
I am unable to perceive how or why this process of Evolution should cease. It may be followed with satisfactory precision from that distant past when the earth supported no life of any kind. Everything connected with the earth was thoroughly sterilized—All the chemical elements that exist now were present in this cosmic mass. Their combinations were limited to the inorganic and even at that, of necessity, quite unstable, on account of the intense heat and continuous, cataclysmal, upheavals—It is entirely unnecessary to consume any time or exert any energy in an attempt to compute the duration of this instability—We have preponderant evidences that such condition has been experienced by our Mother Earth. If, then we grant this period of sterility, there must be some explanation for what followed.
Back in this dim past, in a temperature sufficient to reduce even the heaviest elements, such as iron, limestone and so on, to include everything; to the gaseous state, we seem to be a long way from the immortality of a soul that as yet had no existence. But here is where the start must be made. In the course of time, small matter, now, great changes were consummated—the earth cooled and calmed, gases condensed to vapor. Oxygen and hydrogen now found their favorite affinity—moisture rising, was condensed to fall in hot rain. And if all the water now represented on the earth was engaged in this wonderful spectacle, just think of the torrential floods that deluged the earth day and night through many millennial cycles! Change—evolution—continued another long cycle of time, and, while still hot, water could maintain its form on the surface, formed by the cooling and condensing of heavier elements and combinations of elements. Now accumulations of water were more and more constant, until the earth began to assume something of its present appearance, though it was very much larger and entirely bare as to vegetation or any life.
But evolution never takes “time out”—all the elements which are now contained in trees, animals, and the beautifully tinted flowers of all earth’s fullness were present then. They formed their affinities—LIFE (as we know it now in the most primitive state) represented by the first vegetable cells—perhaps much less complex than cells that we demonstrate now by the aid of high power microscopes—all the elements necessary to the life of the simplest living cell in a suitable environment of warmth, moisture, and the vitalizing rays of the sun, the cosmic rays—aided by every necessary energy that now contributes to the life of a plant cell started what we, now, call spontaneous evolution of life—Creation has continued in the same manner, in similar environments, to this day, and we will continue as long as chemical elements retain their present and past characteristics.
Evolution in everything is easier and more rapid after the start is made—A fact so evident in all progress made by man. Organic came from, or was constructed upon inorganic—The inorganic kingdom is called the mineral kingdom. From it grew the vegetable kingdom, and constructed out of both these was the animal kingdom—Leaving eons of time behind us, we are now existing in the cycle of the animal.
You retort that God created life on this earth and my response is: a-men. God is life—no item of Nature’s abundance is separated from God—Nature is a department of God—whatever nature accomplished is done by Him—the fool, and only the fool, hath said: “There is no God”—Such noble perfection is the greatest of codes of laws must have been preceded by the noblest of all law makers. Without fault or weakness—hampered by no lack of understanding—omniscient—omnipotent. The absolute. So the laws created by Him are complete and perfect in every detail.
We must avow the highest admiration for all the great thinkers of the past, from the dynasty of the Amenhoteps and their teachers, down through the great procession of the present. They furnish us such beauty of thought—gems of profound excellence. Without their contributions we would be back where they began. The future, in everything, must be constructed from the best in the past, with new materials added as fast as they can evolve. Thus we go onward—ever upward in the march toward perfection.
Only a poor guess could be projec