We may be satisfied with myths as to the ordering of the first family,
and we may leave to the play of fancy the specifications of an ideal
heaven; but when we begin to order our own families and adjust our
social and civic affairs we are compelled to wait for principles based
on facts, for truth. Religion thus becomes a science.

Much eloquence was spilled over the conflict between religion and
science. It was only a conflict between the old religion and its new
form, between the gray dawn and the growing day. Our fathers were not
wilfully false, holding on to darkness when the light came; but they so
long had held sacred the pictures seen in twilight they were loath to
give them up for those of the full day's printing.

The most damaging infidelity is the lack of faith in truth, the fear
that it might not be safe to allow all the facts to be known. He who
in the name of religion seeks to prevent our seeing and accepting the
full facts is religion's greatest foe. Only the full truth can set us
fully free, intellectually, spiritually, morally.

Why should we fear the light of investigation on the things of
religion? There is more sacredness in simple truth than in secrecy.
It were better to be lost forever seeking truth than saved by
sophistry. How foolish to attempt to adjust our lives by laws built
out of speculation, to attempt to steer by a compass when there is no
pole of truth?

In to-day's changing tides of thought, when the old faiths seem
slipping away, when we wonder why we have lost the simple faith of our
own youth or our father's, looking for some firm ground for our feet,