We do not wonder the ancients worshipped the sun. They regarded it as the source or author of their being—their Creator. The theologian calls his creator God. But the Hebrew word for God is Elohim—creative forces. John says, “The word was God.” The psalmist says, “Day unto day uttereth speech.” What is speech but vibration? The sun is the source of all vibration in the solar system. It has created this earth and all its inhabitants. All forms of life on this planet, all activities, are but the radiant energy of the sun. CHAPTER VI Fear The Great Curse of Humanity. The Only Devil. Its Insidious Claims. Its Effect on Life. “The thing that I feared hath come upon me.”—Job. Through fear the human race has been converted into cowards and slaves. In a former chapter we have suggested the origin or birth of this demon with its subsequent evolution of the ideas of good and evil, rewards and punishments, religions, right and wrong, etc.—Side by side with the above was the evolution of the conscience, which in turn became the greatest producer of fear known to the human race. The conscience, that Shakespeare says “doth make cowards of us all.” A modern teacher says “Conscience is the jaw of morality. It has spread far outside the Christian or any other religion and become an essential factor of modern civilization. Conscience is the most depressing element in human existence. Its entire business is to reduce spirit. Every inch of its energy is laid out against health. It taxes vitality. It claws with shame. It bites with disgrace. It murders with morbidness, both body and mind. It manufactures right and wrong. It discharges poison or stimulant into the blood and nerves. … It has scared the race into trembling lest it leave them. It has made cowards of us all.” In man’s effort to escape the thralldom of these twin curses,—fear and conscience—which so often drives humanity to self-destruction or loss of reason, and feeling his helplessness against these demons, he sought a means of propitiating them, and so constructed a system of religious belief. Believing that his Gods must be placated for his fancied transgressions, a form of worship was evolved, with ceremonies involving sacrifice of blood, gifts of money, and treasure for building magnificent temples, churches, abbeys and monasteries. Lavishing billions of dollars upon their architecture and art. All these were efforts to overcome fear, and appease a conscience, which was evolved through the influence of the shadow-world and the folk-lore of primitive man upon the progenitors of the race.