As your civilization advanced, it was to be seen that the virtues, and especially those which had a direct influence upon material welfare, grew and enlarged. The path to honor was no longer exclusively through carnage and victory, and the possession and cultivation of certain virtues brought consideration and respect. It was at this critical stage of your progress that there was inflicted upon you an evil greater than any your people have known. You were not content with viewing the deity as we do from afar, and with accepting the impulses of virtue as a part of yourselves, instituted for the wise purpose of a continuous self-development toward a better earthly life; but instead, in your unreasonable yearning to communicate with the supreme Author, you surrendered yourself to the wiles of the seers, and became the willing dupes of their delusions. There is nothing more unhappy to tell of you than the consequences of this grave error. Your assumed possession of the commands and wishes of the Deity in the shape of a revelation, has proved more a misfortune than a blessing to you. In the first place, it has lowered your conception of the Deity below ours. It has turned your religion into a contest. It has rendered possible the establishment of certain ecclesiastical bodies among you, who, while assuming entire control of the morals of your people, are beset in their internal parts with all the vices which come from cruelty, cupidity, and love of power. Besides, your formulated conditions of punishments and rewards have degraded religion from a cultivation of virtue for itself, and the immediate good it brings, to a selfish scramble, each one struggling to shoulder his way into the midst of celestial delights. It can be easily understood why your religion, with all its crudities and superstitions, has taken so firm a hold upon your society. You are constituted as we are, with the same inherent elements of progress. The steady increase of your affinity for the virtues, and those who practice them, is a marked quality of your career, and as they all lead, in one way or another, towards that union of interests which constitutes the perfect social state, you are thereby impelled by a natural and providential desire to build them up. So that, as a matter of fact, there being an inherent love of goodness ingrafted in your very natures, your religious creeds have attracted you to them, and held you in fetters, under the false theory that the good within you is but a contribution from their exclusive and abundant sources of supply. It has been your misfortune to be held captive throughout your progress by the shrewd designs of your seers and prophets, who have not failed until recently to supply you with an occasional change of supernatural pabulum, to meet the new wants of a steadily advancing development.