So that--but you all know it as well as I do or you would not be Unitarians--all this has been simply a growth from year to year, from generation to generation, from age to age. And let me tell you the first thing about these gods that they made after the image of men. After a time there were men on the earth who were better than these gods in heaven. Then those gods began to die, one after another, and dropped from their thrones. The time will probably come in the history of this world when an insurance company can calculate the average life of gods as well as they do now of men; because all these gods have been made by folks. And, let me say right here, the folks did the best they could. I do not blame them. Everybody in the business has always done his best. I admit it. I admit that man has traveled from the first conception up to Unitarianism by a necessary road. Under the conditions he could have come up in no other way. I admit all that. I blame nobody. But I am simply trying to tell, in a very feeble manner, how it is. Now, in a little while, I say, men got better than their gods. Then the gods began to die. Then we began to find out a few things in nature, and we found out that we were supporting more gods than were necessary--that fewer gods could do the business--and that, from an economical point of view, expenses ought to be cut down. There were too many temples, too many priests, and you always had to give tithes of something to each one, and these gods were about to eat up the substance of the world. And there came a time when it got to that point that either the gods would eat up the people or the people must destroy some gods, and of course they destroyed the gods--one by one and in their places they put forces of nature to do the business--forces of nature that needed no church, that needed no theologians; forces of nature that you are under no obligation to; that you do not have to pay anything to keep working. We found that the attraction of gravitation would attend to its business, night and day, at its own expense. There was a great saving. I wish it were the same with all kinds of law, so that we could all go into some useful business, including myself. So day by day, they dispensed with this expense of deities; and the world got along just as well--a good deal better. They used to think--a community thought--that if a man was allowed to say a word against a deity, the god would visit his vengeance upon the entire nation. But they found out, after a while, that no harm came of it; so they went on destroying the gods. Now, all these things are relative; and they made gods a little better all the time--I admit that--till we struck the Presbyterian, which is probably the worst ever made. The Presbyterians seem to have bred back.