From the point of view of evolution the important fact is that this new aspect of the idea of God is not something merely superposed upon the old: if it were simply superposed, it would not be evolved. Neither is the disclosure, to the soul, of God as love, evolved from the conception of Him as the being from whom men may seek the fulfilment of their desires. To interpret the process of religious evolution in this way would be to misinterpret it, in exactly the same way as if we were to suppose that, only when the evolution of vegetable life had been carried out to the full in all its forms, did the evolution of animal life begin. Animals are not vegetables carried to a rather higher stage of evolution, any more than vegetables are animals which have relapsed to a lower stage. If then we are to apply the theory of evolution to spiritual life, as well as to bodily life, we must apply it in the same way. We must regard the various forms, in the one case as in the other, as following different lines, and tending in different directions from a common centre, rather than as different and successive sections of one and the same line. Spell no more becomes prayer than vegetables become animals. Impelled by the force of calamity to look in one direction--that of deliverance from pestilence or famine--early man saw, in the idea of God, a refuge in time of trouble. Moved at a later time by the feeling of gratitude, man found in the idea of God an object of veneration; and then interpreted his relation as that of a servant to his lord. Whichever way this interpretation was pushed--whether to mean that the servant was to do things pleasing to his lord, in order to gain the fulfilment of his own desires; or to imply that his transgressions stood ever between him and his offended master--further advance in that direction was impossible. A new direction, and therefore a fresh point of departure, was necessary. It was forthcoming in the Christian idea of God as the heavenly Father. That idea when revealed is seen to have been what was postulated but never attained by religion in its earlier stages. The petitions for our daily bread, for forgiveness of sins, and for delivery from evil, had as their basis, in pre-Christian religions, man's desire. In Christianity those petitions are preferred in the conviction that the making of them is in accordance with God's will and the granting of them in accordance with His love; and that conviction is a normative principle of prayer. V THE IDEA AND BEING OF GOD