The Religion of Evolution (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1876 edition. Excerpt: ...writings. But the larger cause has been the tone of theology and the pulpit. These have represented law as only police and hangmen, thunders of Sinai, or torments of hell. For ages the plan has been systematically pursued, of making men feel that they were in the clutches of cruel law bent on their destruction, and then of offering them deliverance from its iron power by means of a gospel of mercy and love that was represented as being outside of and above law. Thus the belief has been created, that law and love were of necessity in a kind of eternal antagonism. To the question, then, of the nature and results of law, whether it is loving or cruel, we will now address ourselves. The early conception of the universe was that its great forces were predominantly cruel. Cold, darkness, storm, hunger, wild beasts, death, all these were the work of evil beings that had no love for man, and were instigated by hatred and malice. Nature was cruel. It was not, however, cruel law. These early men had no conception of any such thing as law. Cause and effect had no orderly relation in their mind. It was only cruel caprice. Behind these great movements and forces were malignant persons that loved the smell of blood, and rejoiced in the infernal music of human groans, and eagerly licked up the tears that sorrow let fall. This is true of all the early religions. The popular conception of Jehovah among the Jews was that he was hard and cruel, the god of thunderbolts and hail, "a consuming fire," one punishing children for the sins of the fathers. At first, then, nature was cruel caprice. In after-times there gradually grew up a belief in a good god. But you must notice that he was not at all the god of these supposed cruel forces of nature. They were...