The real religious basis is that he serves God best who serves man best, and the coming of the kingdom of God is concomitant with the coming of the kingdom of man. The claim of infallibility is always suspicious, and there is no finality in religious truth and progress; and it cannot be doubted that the religion of the nineteenth century is as great an improvement upon the religion of the first as our civilization, science, commerce, and the mechanic arts are superior. Prof. Max Müller, of the orthodox University of Oxford, well says: “The elements and roots of religion were there as far back as we can trace the history of man, and the history of religion, like the history of language, shows us throughout a succession of new combinations of the same radical elements.” In no system of religion is the principle of combination, of previously existing forms of creed and conduct, so apparent as in the Christian religion. It is the best because it is the latest of the great religions, and contains the best selections and combinations of all previously existing ones, Jewish and pagan. Our faith in the sublime moral precepts of Christianity is increased and strengthened as we realize that they are thousands of years old, that they are the accumulated products of the ages—an evolution from the consummated wisdom of all previously existing religionists of all times and countries. God’s real revelations to man are from within, and they would not be any more divine if they were from without. Of nothing can we be so sure as that God will take care of his own eternal truth, and cause it to shine forth with more radiant splendor as knowledge shall increase and true science shall learn to read more intelligently the records of the divine character and will in the infallible book of nature. Ecclesiastical tomtits may twitter and flutter, and theological owls may look solemn and wise and hoot out their gloomy forebodings, but the true ark of Nature’s covenant is safe.: “Ever the truth comes uppermost, And ever is justice done.” The only safe position, because it is the only true one, is that there is a God in the universe, and that it is the divine order to make known his will by slow and uniform processes, and not by sudden and miraculous revelations. The principle of evolution is just as true in its application to moral and spiritual things as it is in regard to the material world, and another Darwin will some day arise who will demonstrate the fact. Indeed, this field is “ripe for the harvest,” as several new sciences, not dreamed of until within a half century past, are revealing facts and establishing principles which are sure to consign the old supernaturalism to regions of superstition and priestcraft. CHAPTER XIV. A FEW FRAGMENTS _“Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.”—John 6:12._ GNOSTICISM.