But the question arises, how does it happen that Christianity, with an ethic fundamentally the same as that of every other great religion of the world, diverges so completely here? Is it conceivable that Christianity, while of Divine origin, has become in process of time dwarfed and deformed to the extent even of losing some _essential_ features? It holds, as sectarian pulpits represent it, no doctrine of re-incarnation, and appears to have no clear basis of metaphysical or philosophic thought. Moreover, it has elements impossible to reconcile with the mental and emotional developments of a scientific and intellectual age. The anthropomorphic conception of Deity, the almost literal interpretation of the Jewish allegory of creation, the personalization of the metaphysical and mystic Trinity; the approval of the barbarous sacrifices and vengeful Deity of the Old Testament; the anti-evolutional doctrine of the vicarious Atonement in the New Testament; the crude ideas concerning the soul, heaven and hell; and the absence of any evolutional theory applied to human destiny—all these, and above all the ignorance and pride that claim for this particular form of religion a unique position in the world’s history, and assume that it alone and no other religion is the revelation of God to man, show an ample justification for the fact that the most intelligent men and women of Western civilization stand outside the Christian Churches to-day, or are in them from motives that have nothing to do with devout religious feeling.