There is a great demand among the people of this, and probably of every past age, for something new in the revelations of religious thought and knowledge.  When it has not been forthcoming according to the desires of aspiring worshippers, the imaginations of would-be teachers and leaders have set to work to devise new schemes for the beguiling of their fellow mortals that should hypnotize them, and hold their allegiance to some new revelation of religion, or so-called science.  The following that some of the isms, and newly-hatched cults are getting together is simply amazing.  They seem to reach out and pervade the world, and they are not confined to any particular grade or class of people.  The “Zionists,” the “Adventists,” the “Perfectionists,” the “Holy Rollers,” the “Christian Scientists,” the “Spiritualists,” and unnumbered other forms of belief leave a wide margin for all sorts and kinds of people of peculiar idiosyncrasies.  So much has been promised, and so little realized in the way of comfort and satisfaction that wails of doubt, and sorrow are undiminished.  Every bit of this “groundswell” of seeking, tortured souls is just the reaction from slavish, blasphemous, orthodox religion.

From the perceptions of the primitive man to the understandings of the unfolded brains of the thinking, reasoning people of today is indeed a “far cry,” and the queer vagaries, and the impossible goings on of the reputed gods, in partnership with Nature, that were once received with awe and profound belief, have now nearly lost their hold upon the credulity of modern humanity.

As man has unfolded and his perceptions have enlarged, his fears of the wrath of God, and of his possible interference with man’s schemes and purposes have given way to man’s own will, and to his determination to succeed in proving himself master of nature’s forces, and of the whole planet.  He has created the “New Earth” of material comfort and satisfaction that has been so long foretold; while from the heavens countless multitudes of awakened, arisen souls throng all the ways of life, proclaiming the truth of the absolute present existence of a “New Heaven” also.  This is not a perfect time, by any means, even with all this manifestation of progressive power.  Perfection in anything, in all things, is a matter of growth, of evolution, and the whole world is swinging along in the pathway of progress toward that goal, the knowledge of spiritual law which is God, as fast as time can move.  But we are actually living in the enjoyment of the fulfillment of a profound prophecy, with but little thought or realization of all it means or portends.

THE GROWTH PROCESSES OF THE HUMAN SOUL.