Excerpt from The Passing and the Permanent in Religion: A Plain Treatment of the Great Essentials of Religion, Being a Sifting Religions die, while religion is universal, per manent and progressive theologies Change and pass, but so long as man thinks, he will think and theorise, though imperfectly, about the greatest of all themes man has always speculated about the universe and, in later times, has studied it, and his theories about it always have been and always must be intimately associated with both his religion and his theology man at first regarded himself as made suddenly by fiat power, but he has learned that he has evolved from lower forms of life, while his religions and his theologies have kept step with his own advance bibles have been the natural expression of man's hopes, fears and aspirations at the different stages of his advance, not creating religion, but being created by it gods have been the best ideals which man has been able to imagine, at different steps of his advance, of the one Eternal, of whose life all things are only the changing and passing expression saviours have taken Shape in accord with man's thoughts of the evils from which he supposed he needed to be delivered, and all are entitled to that name who have helped to deliver the race from any of its evils, though this may not interfere with the supremacy of one worship has taken shape accord ing to man's changing theories of the powers he has thought of as being able to help or hurt him, and. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.