Page:The Philosophy of Creation.djvu/80

 religion from being the product of Evolution, for true religion is nothing other than a mind and heart knowledge of God whereby we can act in harmony with Him. It is true that religion admits of development when there is given revelation from which to start, but the term Evolution is as inapplicable to the growth of religion as it is to creation.

The various religions of antiquity, with their one great God and lesser gods, were not the beginning of a true and rational religion, but the perversion of former revelation. Egyptian, Greek, and Roman wwship, and the like, are examples of falsified and perverted relics of revelation.

The worshipping of images is not the beginning of the development of a religion that eventually would acknowledge God; but God having been revealed, and symbols of His power having been made, the people, as they became external, gradually fell to worshipping the symbol rather than the thing symbolized. No proposition could be framed that would be more impossible and illogical than that the worship of God developed from the worship of images. The two are exact opposites. We can see that, the worship of God being instituted by the Creator, men could descend to the worship of idols. Equally clear is it that the ascent to God could not com-