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HISTORIC GROWTH OF MAN.

SYMBOLS AND TYPES.   219

will be very different from repeating devout supplications, or elegant ascriptions of praise, or rhythmical and learned phrases of pulpit oratory. These poor substitutes for life have no power to fit man for the reign of righteousness and peace.

The perfect life is worth the effort required for its attainment. It is indeed within easy reach of the present generation. Its new methods rest upon everlasting laws. It will not require eighteen centuries of experiment to verify their truth and their efficiency.

We ask the reader, or the critic, if by chance such a one should criticize these pages, to note that the statements here made concerning the laws of harmony in man's constitution, are not made on the basis of momentary fancies or a mere surface knowledge and speculation. On the contrary, these statements represent the results of many years of careful study and work in the fields of the exact sciences, many years spent in analysis, comparison and measuring. That long survey justifies us in speaking with a good degree of confidence. Still very much remains to be done in these fields. Social harmony includes immensely more than many of our writers have imagined. Vastly more than good sentiments and kindly intentions.

The coming religion cannot be evolved by a generous sort of synthesis of those which already exist. However well done, that process would only give us a mass of impractical mysteries, or else would only save the common moral precepts. The Christian teachers, like those of the Hindoo religions, declare that the great doctrines of religion are mysteries. You cannot

mix up mysteries so that they shall explain each other. If you blend together the ignorance of a dozen men, it will not produce wisdom or science. A scientific development was needed for religion quite as much as it was required in geology or astronomy. Even a cursory sketch will show that in clearness and precision of statement, in the inspiring loftiness and breadth of its purposes, and in the practical certainty of its methods, the scientific unfolding of religion will exceed the older views of theology as much as the splendors of noonday surpass the uncertain glimmer of the stars.

Because science was not developed, a mass of error has gathered about every form of religion in past times. The only safeguard against this in the future will be to unite science with inspiration as the ineasure of all truth. In the new social order no doctrine or belief which is not susceptible to scientific demonstrations must ever be made a part of the laws or constitution of society. Scientific proof can be made a basis for unity because this kind of proof can be understood alike by all persons. The faculty of inspiration is placed side by side with that of reason in the brain. This alone is sufficient to show how absurd it was to suppose that reason could not understand the truths given through inspiration. The two faculties are normal complements of each other and were made to work together like all other pairs of faculties associated in the same manner in the brain.

The Bible is a library of Hebrew books, bound together in one volume. These books were written by many different persons, at intervals during fifteen