Our veneration for the Deity, which is truer and more sincere than yours, arises from a widely different conception. Looking back upon the ages, and what they have brought to us, we perceive that each new development in matter brings an increase of those qualities which give us pleasure to behold. Beginning with the most unattractive shapes, this process of change in organization and symmetry, by an unalterable law of the Creator, bring to us out of the ugliness of the past the beautiful of the present. Since, therefore, we see Him constantly at work, transforming the ugly into the beautiful, we believe He is pleased with the colors, shapes, and qualities of things which delight our own cultivated senses. Acting then on this conviction, we surround ourselves with the beautiful in nature and art.

The change, in the form of matter, is not more instructive than the steady modification of intelligence, which, from its primitive ignorance, superstition, and brutality, has gradually been raised step by step to its present higher[Pg 133] grade of thought and action. We recognize here a fact most important and significant to us. While the divine energy is steadily at work, converting lower forms of matter into higher ones, we are given no part in the proceeding. It goes on without our assistance, and we have no power to diminish or accelerate its steady onward course. It is widely different with intelligence. That is given into our hands, with all its grand possibilities. In that, we have evidence of the divine confidence to promote its advancement in view of the blessings it holds in store. Taking this view, we have for centuries cultivated the mind in all directions of knowledge and feeling, as the chief part of our religion. The motion of the spheres is not more certainly the work of this great being, than are these progressive changes in mind and matter.

We believe vice and ugliness to be convertible terms, the latter a quality due to imperfectly developed matter, and the first a property of intelligence in the same imperfect state; just as beauty and virtue describe together, or separately, the same advanced evolution.

But while working in harmony with the Deity, and assisting in his purposes, we have constantly in view, as an incentive to action, the consummation or goal to which[Pg 134] all these changes tend. We believe the outcome to be a spiritual life with all things knowable, and a state of perfection and happiness beyond our present conception. Happiness, then, being a religious aspiration, we promote it in all ways to the innocent and reasonable inclinations of our present state.

Our religion is consequently more jubilant than solemn. We have no torments in store in it, nor long drawn agonies and mortifications of the flesh. Its only business with death is to smooth its pillow, and to reduce its attendant sorrows to the minimum. To the misfortunes of the present our religion extends its hand of sympathy and material help. To what purpose should it introduce and dwell upon the miseries and sorrows of the past? We let the dead ages rest. We can find nothing in their ashes to compare with the living. The present is better than the past, as the future will be better in exact measure with the new truths discovered, and the old fallacies cast aside. You rake among the emanations of an early and imperfect development for monitors and guides, and do honor to them for the mysteries they invoke. You place the withered hand of the mummy into the warm palm of the living, and your ceremony of introduction[Pg 135] is a prayer that the living body may never depart from the dead form.

The untenable and unsupportable premises upon which your religions are based will lead to their decay. Nothing of them will remain to you but their spirituality. Shorn of their superstitions, and guided by the intellect, the spiritual part of them will be retained by you as a jewel repolished and in a new setting.

The orthodox among you are suspicious of the inroads of science, unaware of the fact that in due time it will fix upon your belief the conviction of a future spiritual existence without the shadow of a doubt. When you will have arrived at that point, your ways of morality and progress will be so much increased, that you will regard your previous advancement as trifling. To some, your science appears to lend encouragement to materialistic beliefs. This is only your half knowledge. For some time to come your discoveries will tend in that direction of thought, but all this will be superseded with a firm conviction of the existence of the Deity, and your steady approach to Him. The period of danger to you will arrive when you will have made the discovery, as we have centuries ago, of what may be described in your[Pg 136] language as the universal diffusion of intelligence amongst all matter, inorganic as well as organic.

It may be a startling proposition to announce to you that the quality which gives you the power of abstract thought is possessed in a lower degree by, for instance, the stones which lie beneath your feet; yet such is the case, for we have demonstrated beyond a doubt that the chemical forces and affinities are nothing else but low, restricted, and insensible forms of intelligent ............