208   HISTORIC GROWTH OF MAN.

ditions. In this thing the religious teachers have directly opposed the highest truths of both science and inspiration. Not one of these religions will take practical steps to remove the dark curses of poverty and disease.

At the front end of the major axis are the faculties of learning and science; and at the back end of this line are those of liberty, equality and industry. The upright minor axis, with religion at its crown, cannot maintain its unity, its power for good, unless this horizontal line also acts in a full and normal manner. This requires that both knowledge and industry shall be organized in the interest of all the people. Instead of this, the Christian church has taught that ignorance is no bar to a perfect spiritual life and that science is either opposed to religion or else has nothing to do with religious truths, while an industrial condition in which the workers are actual or practical slaves need not lessen the enjoyment of the best spiritual blessings.

The great lines of force in the human brain are fixed by the eternal laws of geometry. These lines are sustained by the very form and attachment of the muscles in the human frame. More than this, we know that these same laws of the ellipse extend from the lowly forms of life up through man to the sublime mechanism of the heavens. The radiant paths of thought and feeling in the brain follow the same laws that mark the orbits of planets and stars in the vast realms of space. The basic laws of religion are not confined to the great pulsations of spiritual life, for they are embodied in the very framework of the

universe.

FROM MOTE TO STAR.   209

It is the glory of modern science that it does more

than to give us an inward consciousness of the vast

unity of things. For by giving us a definite knowl

edge of laws, the science of our day places in our hands

the power to create those harmonies of life that shall

fill the measure of human aspirations.

The modern attempts to prove that morality is not

a part of religion have been false to both history and

philosophy. For history shows that every great

religion has included a system of morality, it has dealt

with the relations of man to man. And philosophy

agrees with inspiration in teaching that our fellow

beings have souls as well as ourselves, and that the

relations of parent and child, of man and wife, of neighbor and friend, all serve to illustrate our proper relations to spiritual beings above and around us.

Religion is essentially social and not individual. For it always expresses the reciprocal relations of one living being to others. To say that religion is or should be a private affair is to mistake its very nature. We are related to our fellow beings; we act upon them through every faculty. The true constitution of society, with all of its institutions, thus becomes the greatest question of religion. The prophets of Israel were right in making religion a constituent part in a kingdom or state of universal righteousness. The Bible salvation was collective; it aimed at saving communities and nations, as all of its great promises clearly show. The full life of man is collective ; it is always connected with the life of his fellows. The isolated monk in his narrow cell imagined that he was religious. But his experience was morbid ; it was far from being healthy and normal.