We believe vice and ugliness to be convertible terms, the latter a quality due to imperfectly developed matter, and the first a property of intelligence in the same imperfect state; just as beauty and virtue describe together, or separately, the same advanced evolution. But while working in harmony with the Deity, and assisting in his purposes, we have constantly in view, as an incentive to action, the consummation or goal to which all these changes tend. We believe the outcome to be a spiritual life with all things knowable, and a state of perfection and happiness beyond our present conception. Happiness, then, being a religious aspiration, we promote it in all ways to the innocent and reasonable inclinations of our present state. Our religion is consequently more jubilant than solemn. We have no torments in store in it, nor long drawn agonies and mortifications of the flesh. Its only business with death is to smooth its pillow, and to reduce its attendant sorrows to the minimum. To the misfortunes of the present our religion extends its hand of sympathy and material help. To what purpose should it introduce and dwell upon the miseries and sorrows of the past? We let the dead ages rest. We can find nothing in their ashes to compare with the living. The present is better than the past, as the future will be better in exact measure with the new truths discovered, and the old fallacies cast aside. You rake among the emanations of an early and imperfect development for monitors and guides, and do honor to them for the mysteries they invoke. You place the withered hand of the mummy into the warm palm of the living, and your ceremony of introduction is a prayer that the living body may never depart from the dead form. The untenable and unsupportable premises upon which your religions are based will lead to their decay. Nothing of them will remain to you but their spirituality. Shorn of their superstitions, and guided by the intellect, the spiritual part of them will be retained by you as a jewel repolished and in a new setting. The orthodox among you are suspicious of the inroads of science, unaware of the fact that in due time it will fix upon your belief the conviction of a future spiritual existence without the shadow of a doubt. When you will have arrived at that point, your ways of morality and progress will be so much increased, that you will regard your previous advancement as trifling. To some, your science appears to lend encouragement to materialistic beliefs. This is only your half knowledge. For some time to come your discoveries will tend in that direction of thought, but all this will be superseded with a firm conviction of the existence of the Deity, and your steady approach to Him. The period of danger to you will arrive when you will have made the discovery, as we have centuries ago, of what may be described in your language as the universal diffusion of intelligence amongst all matter, inorganic as well as organic.