Excerpt from The Passing and the Permanent in Religion: A Plain Treatment of the Great Essentials of Religion, Being a Sifting From These of Such Things as Cannot Outlive the Results of Scientific, Historical and Critical Study 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 accordingr to man's changing the ories of the powers he has thought of as being able to help or hurt him, and it is essentially admiration for that which man thinks of as above him, and so is the condition of all growth and progress: prayer is the universal instinct which leads man to try to get into helpful relations with the powers thought of as able to control his destiny, and since the conditions out of which it springs are perma nent, it cannot pass away, though it must slough off its superstitions and become ra tional: the Church is the voluntary and nat ural organisation of men as religious beings, and it seeks the highest spiritual ends of which those who constitute it can dream: hells are the more or less horrible dreams which have haunted the imaginations of men as the outcome of evil in another life, and they have generally been crude and libellous parodies on the truth that in all worlds men reap what. 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.