Here we touch the vital centre of the whole. On no subject does man ever show himself so violently crazed as on religion. The gods of the past, created by his fanatical imagination, were more or less the deified types of his own vices, or symbols of such virtues as he feebly strove to attain, but he had no real faith in their power to aid or to circumvent his designs. Yet, in lunatic fashion, he behaved as if he thought them omnipotent, though conscious all the while of the silly comedy he was playing with himself. Now, after two thousand years of the pure and beautiful Gospel of Christ which teaches how “god-in-man” might be realised, a lesson to which has been added the strong affirmation of Science, emphasising the fact that “God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth,” Man still plays the crazed crank with dogma, and refuses to realise the Actual Alive Intelligence behind creation, which, from the delicate fluff of a small bird’s feather or moth’s wing, up to the height of solar systems, works in perfection and balance to the exactitude of a pin’s point. This living, loving Presence the dogmatists wellnigh ignore, preferring to move in their own small orbit of creed rather than risk the broader spaces of assured glory. The narrow spirit of self-absorption not only limits their outlook, but holds them bound in a condition of deplorable egotism, like that of an “unco guid” Scotch body who, after accepting many useful kindnesses from a friend to whom she “gushed” affection, changed her sentiments as soon as a slight difference arose between them, and with much unctuous piety let it be known that she was obliged to leave that once “precious” friend’s name “out of her prayers”! The monstrous conceit that could imagine God capable of noticing a name left out of a Scotchwoman’s prayers, or out of any prayers whatsoever, would be ludicrous if it were not so pitifully expressive of barbaric ignorance--and who shall count the thousands of similar narrow mind and heart who have a lurking hope that heaven is for them alone, and that their “dear friends” will all be left out in the cold!