There appears in all religions, at a certain stage of the religious development, a party of dogmatists. They are people who, in their zeal, insist on the exclusiveness of their own religion, as if truth were a commodity which, if possessed by one, cannot be possessed by anybody else. They know little of the spirit that quickens, but believe blindly in the letter of the dogma. It is not faith in their opinion that saves, but the blindness of faith. They interpret Christ's words and declare that he who has another interpretation must be condemned. The dogmatic phase in the development of religion is as natural as boyhood in a human life and as immaturity in the growth of fruit; it is natural and necessary, but it is a phase only which will pass as inevitably by as boyhood changes into manhood, and as the prescientific stage in the evolution of civilisation gives way to a better and deeper knowledge of nature. The dogmatist is in the habit of identifying his dogmatism with religion; and that is the reason why his definitions of religion and morality will unfailingly come in conflict with the common sense of the people. The dogmatist makes religion exclusive. In the attempt of exalting religion he relegates it to supernatural spheres, thus excluding it from the world and creating a contrast between the sacred and the profane, between the divine and the secular, between religion and life. Thus it happens that religion becomes something beyond, something extraneous, something foreign to man's sphere of being. And yet religion has developed for the sake of sanctifying the daily walks of man, of making the secular sacred, of filling life with meaning and consecrating even the most trivial duties of existence. Secularism is the reaction against dogmatism, but secularism still accepts the views of the dogmatist on religion; for it is upon the dogmatist's valuations and definitions that the secularist rejects religion as worthless. * * * The religious movement, of which The Open Court Publishing Co. is an exponent, represents one further step in the evolution of religious aspirations. As alchemy develops into chemistry, and astrology into astronomy, as blind faith changes into seeing face to face, as belief changes into knowledge, so the religion of miracles, the religion of a salvation by magic, the religion of the dogmatist, ripens into the religion of pure and ascertainable truth. The old dogmas, which in their literal acceptance appear as nonsensical errors, are now recognised as allegories which symbolise deeper truths, and the old ideals are preserved not with less, but with more, significance than before. God is not smaller but greater since we know more about Him, as to what He is and what He is not, just as the universe is not smaller but larger since Copernicus and Kepler opened our eyes and showed us what the relation of our earth in the solar system is and what it is not.