The Stark County Democrat. [volume] (Canton, Ohio) 1833-1912, 1896-03-26


ghost world is always mixed mp with his
childlike notions Of what he ought to
do. The natives Of Tirra del FuegO for
instance, threatened snowstorm be-
cause Darwin killed some of their birds
for specimens. In tribe suffering al
ways for food any wantOn sacrifice of
food must awaken fear of the tutelar
deities. Whatever the necessities of
tribe have prohibited comes in time to
wear the aspect Of sacrifice to the gods,
and to be regarded only as such. Thus,
intertwined with the consciousness of
the nascent world have been the notions
of deity, the notions of an unseen world,
and the notions Of right and wrong. The
Christian S conceptions of primitive man
have given place to conceptions of wider
experience, but the union of ethics with
theology remains undisturbed, even in
that refined religious theology which
would render no information concern
ing the future life except that the seed
sown here must inevitably determine the
| fruit hereafter.
The speaker said that three essential
elements were in all theories of religion
! first, the belief in deity as in some
way quasi human; secondly, belief in an
unseen world in which human beings
| continue to exist after death thirdly,
recognition Of the ethical conditions of
human life as related in special and
single sense TO the happiness of this
world. If any one of the three should be
taken away the remnant could not prop
erly be called religion.
"Is religion as thus devised some
thing real and substantial, or is it a
mere figmeDt of the imagination? Has
religion through all these weary cen
turies been dealing with an eternal YER
ity, or has it been blindly cropping after
a phantom? Can that history Of the uni
verse which we call the doctrine of evo-
luton, little as we yet know about it,
be made to furnish any lesson that will
prove helpful in answering this ques.
tion? We shall find, l think, that it does
furnish such lesson. Our inquiry will
seem to take US very far afield, and foI
two or three minutes it may not be ap.
parent just where our road is taking us,
but in time it will show us what il
truth.
II often think, when working over
my plants, of what Hneus said, L saw
God in his glory passing before me, and
bowed my head, and of Tennyson:
"Flower in the crannied wall,
pluck you out Of the Crannies;
hold you, root and all,
In my hand;
But If / could understand
What you are, root and ALL all in all,
l should know what God and man is"
The speaker continued that the def
milton given by Herbert Spencer-"thC
continuous adjustment of inner rela
tions to outer relations s'--was one o.
the greatest contributions ever made t
the world of science. As man progress
ed from his lowest state he came tC
have more and more facilities for re-
ceiving impressions from the outside
world. The ear and the eye were bu
notifications of the primitive hair sac
At each modification vast new resource!
opened to man. The inner relations
adjusted themselves to the outer rela
tions, in every case to the bettermen
of the species. The study of embryology
shows that in every instance where thu
rudimentary organ has formed itself j
has been in response to some call from
the environment.
He continued, in reference to the re
lation between man and the spiritua
world: "If the relation thus establish
ed i'll the morning twilight of man.
existence be one i'll which only the sub
jective term is real and the objective
term is nonexistent, then l say it il
something utterly without precedent il
the whole history of creation, and al
the analogies Of evolution, so far as W.
have yet been able to decipher it, ar,
overwhelmingly against any such sup
position. "