In the same way the doctrine of the perfectibility of human nature lends itself to perversion. Nothing could be more desirable than that man should strive after perfection. Did not Christ enjoin His disciples: "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect"? Man is therefore acting in accordance with Christian principles in seeking after divine perfection. But when he comes to believe that he has already attained it he makes of himself a god. "If I justify myself," said Job, "mine own mouth shall condemn me; if I say I am perfect, it shall also prove me perverse." And St. John: "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." More than this, if we seek perfection in others we deceive ourselves equally and make gods of men. This is precisely the conclusion at which perverted Freemasonry and the forms of Socialism deriving from it arrive. Human nature, they say, is itself divine; what need then for other divinities? The Catholic Church is consequently quite right in declaring that the doctrine of the perfectibility of human nature leads to the deification of humanity in that it puts humanity in the place of God. The Grand Orient, which definitely accepts this doctrine, has therefore logically erased the name of the Great Architect of the Universe from its ritual and has become an association of Freethinkers and Atheists. Is it necessary to point out the folly as well as the crime of this delusion--the ludicrous inconsequence of men who divinize humanity yet revile what they call "society"? All the evils of the world, they declare, are not to be found in nature but in "man-made laws," in the institutions of "society." Yet what is society but the outcome of human wills, of human aspirations? Society may be, and no doubt is, in need of reformation, but are not its imperfections the creation of imperfect beings? It is true that to-day the world is in a state of chaos, industrial chaos, political chaos, social chaos, religious chaos. Everywhere men are losing faith in the causes they are supposed to represent; authority questions its own right to govern, democracy is rent with divisions, the ruling classes are abdicating in favour of unscrupulous demagogues, the ministers of religion barter their faith for popularity.