THE NEXT STEP IN 
 EVOLUTION
 
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 The Present St
 
 " Come unto Me all yd that labor 
 And are heavy laden." 1
 
 \C SvofiOion, 
 
 The Present Step 
 
 I.K.FUNK.D.D.LLD. 
 
 FUNK6WAGNALLS COMPANY" 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 NEW YORK 6 CONDON
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1902 
 
 BY 
 FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY 
 
 [Printed in the United States of A merica ] 
 Published in November, 7902.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THIS brief study in evolution 
 appeared first about a year ago as 
 an introduction to a revival of the 
 story of George Croly's "Sala- 
 thiel," rechristened " Tarry Thou 
 Till I Come." 
 
 The study has been so favorably 
 received by some whose judgment 
 I esteem that I have ventured to 
 recast it somewhat, enlarging it 
 here and there, and to send it 
 abroad in its present form.
 
 THE NEXT STEP IN 
 EVOLUTION 
 
 IN the legend of the Wander- 
 ing Jew, the words " Tarry Thou 
 Till I Coine " smote the offender 
 like successive thunder-claps, tho 
 uttered without the noise of 
 speech. At once a doom and a 
 prophecy this Jesus, now climb- 
 ing Calvary to His death, would 
 come again, and the Jew could 
 not perish from the earth until 
 His coming. 
 
 Dr. George Croly based his 
 story " Salathiel," or " Tarry Thou 
 Till I Come," on this old, pathetic 
 legend. He believed that "The 
 Wandering Jew " typical of the 
 9
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 Jewish race is about to end his 
 wearisome journeyings, as Christ 
 is soon to come.* 
 
 * It has been believed by many from 
 the early ages of the Christian era that 
 among the signs of Christ's coming 
 would be the recognition of Him by 
 the Jews as "one sent of the Father," 
 and that they would then be restored 
 to the Father's favor ; that this recog- 
 nition would be accompanied by a re- 
 colonization of the Jews in Palestine ; 
 that from this vantage-ground they, as 
 a nation among nations the " inherent 
 genius of the Jews for things religious" 
 again reasserting itself would lead the 
 nations of the earth in final triumph 
 into the kingdom of the spiritual man. 
 
 Prof. R. Gottheil, of Columbia Uni- 
 versity, and president of the Federa- 
 tion of American Zionists, said, before 
 the Zionist Congress, in the summer of 
 1900, in London: "It is time the na- 
 tions understood our motives. Our 
 purpose is to colonize Palestine. We 
 political Zionists desire a charter from 
 the Sultan authorizing us to settle in 
 our Holy Land, and we ask the Powers 
 to approve and protect this charter." 
 10
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 That the Christ is coming, and 
 that this coming is near at hand, 
 is believed to-day by millions. 
 
 He is coming but how? 
 
 Hear Him: 
 
 The kingdom of heaven is like 
 unto leaven which a woman hid in 
 three measures of meal, till the 
 whole was leavened the life and 
 nature of the leaven reappearing 
 in the quickened mass. 
 
 Again : 
 
 The kingdom of heaven is like 
 a grain of mustard-seed, the least 
 of all seeds, so little that it is 
 likely to be lost sight of in the 
 count of forces; but it has life 
 in it, and the power to grow 
 and multiply, and it spreads its 
 branches in every direction, each 
 laden with seeds the life and 
 nature of the first grain reappear- 
 ing in every one of the myriads of 
 grains. 
 
 11
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 And again : 
 
 The kingdom of heaven is as 
 if a man should cast seed into 
 the ground ; and it should spring 
 up and grow, he knoweth not 
 how; first the blade, then the 
 ear, after that the full corn in 
 the ear. It is all natural: the 
 earth does its work; the sun, 
 the air, the water do their work, 
 and the life and nature of the 
 seed grow and multiply, reappear- 
 ing in each grain in exact accord- 
 ance with the nature of the seed. 
 It is natural, but marvelous : the 
 man " knoweth not how " it is 
 done ; but no one says, therefore, 
 that that growth is supernatural, 
 miraculous. 
 
 Whence the germ of life in the 
 seed? Whence the germ of life 
 in the kingdom of heaven? Who 
 can tell? The wind bloweth 
 where it listeth. Thou seest the 
 12
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 effect of it, but canst not tell 
 whence it cometh, nor whither it 
 goeth. So is life, wherever you 
 find it, whether at the birth of a 
 yeast-plant, of grains of nmstard- 
 seed and of corn, or at the birth of 
 the natural and spiritual man. 
 But the leaven, and the grains of 
 mustard-seed and of corn, and the 
 kingdoms of the natural and the 
 spiritual man, grow and reach per- 
 fection by natural processes that 
 is, in harmony with cause and 
 effect each process subject to 
 critical and scientific analysis, if 
 that analysis goes deep enough, 
 and wide enough, and far 
 enough. 
 
 Life reappears in new life. The 
 leaven and the seed and the Christ 
 life all reincarnate themselves in 
 more leaven, more seed, more of 
 the Christ life. "In that day," 
 said Jesus, " ye shall know that I 
 am in you." Those who study 
 13
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 the New Testament can not but 
 be impressed with how often and 
 under how many forms is there 
 uttered the thought Christ formed 
 in you. 
 
 This is the coming of Christ. 
 Not that it is the only coming; 
 many millions of earnest men and 
 women believe that in the near 
 future He will come in a way pal- 
 pable to our physical senses as 
 He came nineteen hundred years 
 ago. "Ye men of Galilee, why 
 stand ye gazing up into heaven? 
 This same Jesus, which is taken 
 up from you into heaven, shall so 
 come in like manner as ye have 
 seen him go into heaven " (Acts 
 i. 11). 
 
 Yet experiences on the physical 
 plane are of little comparative 
 value comparative. Jesus bade 
 the doubting Thomas to reach 
 forth his hand and touch Him, 
 14
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 that lie might have tangible evi- 
 dence : Now, Thomas, you believe 
 because you have seen and felt; 
 but blessed is he who believes on 
 the higher plane of spiritual know- 
 ing. It is " an evil and adulter- 
 ous generation " that seeketh after 
 proofs of spiritual things on the 
 sensuous level. Men saw and 
 touched Jesus in Palestine who 
 were millions of miles from Him. 
 Were Christ to appear in visible 
 form, it might easily be of no 
 value whatever to come into phys- 
 ical contact with Him, to meet 
 Him on Broadway or on the 
 Strand ; but who can measure the 
 value of having Christ recreated 
 in himself, as the leaven is recre- 
 ated in the meal, and as a seed is 
 recreated in new seed, so that men, 
 when they see that man, and talk 
 to him, and deal with him, shall 
 feel that they have been with 
 Christ? 
 
 15
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 One day I saw in a neighbor's 
 flower-bed a little plant, that, 
 as it pushed its way above the 
 ground, had brought with it the 
 mother seed from which it grew. 
 That was a literal reappearance 
 of the planted seed; but it was 
 not the reappearance, not the res- 
 urrection of the seed, for which a 
 seed grows. 
 
 Christ came the first time into 
 men's vision by coming on the 
 plane of their senses; He comes 
 the second time into men's vision 
 by lifting them up to His plane of 
 spiritual comprehension. 
 
 This coming of Christ involves 
 a new birth, a new creation, a 
 new kingdom. It means a new 
 step in the evolution of man. As 
 man has stepped from the mineral 
 kingdom to the vegetable king- 
 dom, and from the vegetable king- 
 dom to the animal kingdom, and 
 16
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 from the animal kingdom to the 
 kingdom of the natural man,* so 
 now he steps from the kingdom of 
 the natural man to the kingdom 
 of the spiritual man, every portion 
 of this step a natural process sub- 
 ject to critical scientific analysis, 
 if that analysis goes deep enough, 
 wide enough, far enough. It is 
 the continuance of evolution with- 
 out a break, without a leap ("Na- 
 ture never makes leaps," says 
 Leibnitz ; the leaps are only seem- 
 ing), lifting the race by a new 
 birth through Christ, the type- 
 life, up to the plane of spiritual 
 being and knowing. 
 
 Is the visible second coming of 
 Jesus fancy or truth? Increasing 
 multitudes to-day believe it true. 
 
 * This is simply a name ; both king- 
 doms, that of the natural man and that 
 of the spiritual man, are in harmony 
 with the laws of sequence. 
 3 17
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 Among these are many of the 
 foremost Christian teachers of this 
 generation, as that quartette of 
 great preachers recently dead, 
 Charles H. Spurgeon, Newman 
 Hall, A. J. Gordon, and Dwight 
 L. Moody; Theodore Monod, 
 Arthur T. Pierson, F. B. Meyer, 
 J. H. Brookes, C. Cuthbert Hall. 
 There is evidently near at hand 
 a notable revival of this belief.
 
 THE ESSENTIAL COMING 
 OF CHRIST 
 
 This coming is in harmony with 
 the laws of sequence and conti- 
 nuity. 
 
 Each of the successive steps or 
 kingdoms has had its type-life. 
 The plant that is, the physical 
 basis of the plant life came from 
 the inorganic matter ; the animal 
 that is, the physical basis of the 
 animal life came from the plant 
 and through the plant from the 
 mineral kingdom ; the natural man 
 that is, the physical basis of 
 the life of the natural man came 
 from the animal and the kingdoms 
 below it ; the spiritual man that 
 is, the physical basis of the life 
 19
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 of the spiritual man comes from 
 the natural man and the kingdoms 
 below him. 
 
 The development from kingdom 
 to kingdom was a natural unfold- 
 ing ; yet the new creature of the 
 next higher order always came 
 through a new birth a double 
 birth: (1) the birth of the new 
 type-life of the next higher king- 
 dom into the evolutionary order 
 of nature, through the hereditary 
 chain ; and (2) the birth of each 
 individual into this type-life. 
 
 Let us attempt to climb quickly 
 as may be the spiral stairway of 
 the evolution of man, from plat- 
 form to platform kingdom to 
 kingdom. 
 
 FIRST STEP IN LIFE, The 
 
 Vegetable Kingdom. After ages 
 
 of preparation in the inorganic 
 
 world, the material which sup- 
 
 20
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 plies the physical basis of the 
 vegetable life vegetable proto- 
 plasm was ripened through the 
 marvelous chemistry of nature. 
 But when all was ready for the 
 plant, whence came the plant life? 
 Scientists are now practically 
 unanimous in saying that there is 
 not a scintilla of evidence that 
 the inorganic or mineral world 
 has ever evolved a plant life.* 
 
 * " There is not a shadow of trust- 
 worthy direct evidence that abiogene- 
 sis [spontaneous generation] does take 
 place or has taken place within the 
 period during which the existence of 
 life on the globe is recorded." HUX- 
 LEY, under "Biology," "Encyclopedia 
 Britannica," vol. iii., p. 689. 
 
 " I do not forget the alleged facts of 
 spontaneous generation ; but even after 
 the very extended investigations of the 
 last ten years, it may still be stated as 
 a general result of the innumerable ex- 
 periments which have been made, that, 
 in no case has even the lowest type of 
 an organic cell been produced from 
 21
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 "To the scientist," says Darwin, 
 "it is a hopeless inquiry as to 
 how life originated." Life from 
 an egg is still the latest dictum 
 of science, that is, life only from 
 life. When all was ready for the 
 plant, the life came from above.* 
 This life was imparted to and in- 
 carnated in the prepared matter, 
 possessing the power to reorganize 
 after its nature, that is, after the 
 pattern that goes with each type- 
 life, and possessing the power of 
 multiplication, so that the earth 
 
 unorganized matter, unless through the 
 natural processes of growth from a 
 preexisting germ." COOKE, " Religion 
 and Chemistry," ch. vii., p. 222 (1897). 
 
 "These are the generations ... of 
 every plant of the field before it was in 
 the earth " (Gen. ii. 4. 5). 
 
 * " Still more surely can we refer to it 
 [the spiritual world] those progressive 
 manifestations of life in the vegetable, 
 the animal, and man." WALLACE, 
 "Darwinism," p. 476.
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 was covered with all the many 
 varieties of plant life, varieties 
 resulting from the law of selec- 
 tion through difference in climate, 
 through food distribution, and 
 through other causes, and from, 
 the law of heredity. 
 
 SECOND STEP IN LIFE, 
 The Animal Kingdom. No plant, 
 no animal. The plant was neces- 
 sary to prepare the inorganic world 
 for the animal ; the plant is the 
 essential go-between. The animal 
 can not digest and assimilate the 
 mineral, but the plant can, and 
 then the animal can digest and 
 assimilate the plant. But ages 
 elapsed in the preparation of the 
 animal protoplasm, that is, in fit- 
 ting material for the physical basis 
 of the animal life. Then again, 
 when all was ready, whence came 
 the animal life? Scientists now 
 substantially agree that there is
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 not a scintilla of proof that an 
 animal life has ever been de- 
 veloped from a plant. The phys- 
 ical basis of animal life was 
 ripened through the plant and 
 mineral world, and when the basis 
 was ready, animal life came. 
 
 This life also came from above, 
 it did not come from below. It 
 came with the new birth of an 
 animal type-life into the heredi- 
 tary chain of evolution ; and the 
 animal type-life was imparted to 
 and incarnated in the prepared 
 physical basis, bridging in itself 
 the chasm between the two king- 
 doms. This type-life also had the 
 power to reorganize after its na- 
 ture, and from it all animal life 
 was developed. In some, as in 
 the lowest protozoa, it was arrested 
 at a single cell ; in others, it pro- 
 gressed to two, three, a score, 
 myriads of cells ; in some it pro- 
 gressed in lateral ways, ending 
 24
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 in birds, elephants, monkeys, 
 wolves, lions in one preparing 
 the way for man. 
 
 THIRD STEP IN LIFE, The 
 Kingdom of the Natural Man. 
 Again, ages elapsed in the prepa- 
 ration of the human protoplasm, 
 that is, in fitting the material for 
 the physical basis of the natural 
 man ; and when all was ready, the 
 human type-life was imparted to 
 and incarnated in the prepared 
 matter, being born from above into 
 the evolutionary order through the 
 hereditary chain, and having pow- 
 er to reorganize after his nature.* 
 
 *"That it [human consciousness] 
 can not possibly be the product of any 
 cunning arrangement of material par- 
 ticles is demonstrated beyond perad- 
 venture by what we now know of the 
 correlation of physical f orces. " FISKE, 
 " The Destiny of Man," p. 42. 
 
 "Cerebral psychology tells us that by 
 no possibility can thought and feeling
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 From this type-life sprang the 
 races of mankind. More and 
 more with each succeeding king- 
 dom evolution has changed its di- 
 rection upward from the physical 
 
 be in any sense the products of matter. " 
 Idem, p. 109. 
 
 "It would be immeasurably inter- 
 esting to gaze within and follow the 
 processes of such a cerebral mechanism, 
 as we observe the operations of a cal- 
 culating-machine. It is all through 
 and forever inconceivable that a num- 
 ber of atoms of carbon, hydrogen, ni- 
 trogen, oxygen, and so on, shall be 
 other than indifferent as to how they 
 are disposed and how they will be 
 moved. It is utterly inconceivable 
 how consciousness shall arise from 
 their joint action. " DTTBOIS-REYMOND, 
 " Ueber die Grenzen des 2faturerken- 
 nens," p. 42. 
 
 Huxley, November, 1871, Contempo- 
 rary Review, said: "In my belief con- 
 sciousness and molecular action are 
 capable of being expressed by one an- 
 other, j ust as heat and molecular action 
 are capable of being expressed in terms
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 to the psychical, protoplasm giv- 
 ing way to psychoplasm. 
 
 FOUBTH STEP IN LIFE, 
 The Kingdom of the Spiritual 
 Man. Now other ages elapsed. 
 The natural man evolved a higher 
 and higher degree of perfection, 
 evolution finally ceasing along the 
 lines of the coarser physical man, 
 the direction becoming wholly 
 psychic, immensely developing 
 that portion of the brain which is 
 the organ of the psychic powers.* 
 
 of one another," but he accompanied 
 this statement with these words: "I 
 really know nothing, and never hope 
 to know anything, of the steps by which 
 the passage from molecular movement 
 to states of consciousness is effected." 
 
 * Reasoning upon "the dawning of 
 consciousness " in his " Destiny of Man " 
 John Fiske points out that the psychic 
 power depends upon the upper and 
 outer portions of the brain " the cere- 
 brum and the cerebellum. " These are 
 27
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 In the fulness of time there was 
 developed in him what may be 
 called, for the sake of a name, 
 the spiritual protoplasm, or the 
 psychoplasm, * the exalted physi- 
 cal and psychic basis of the inner 
 man, the new creature of the king- 
 dom of the spiritual man. When 
 all was ready, again whence came 
 
 not visible in the lowest forms of ani- 
 mals, but grow large as the scale is 
 ascended. " The cerebral surface of a 
 human infant is like that of an ape. In 
 an adult savage, or a European peas- 
 ant, the furrowing is somewhat marked 
 and complicated. In the brain of a 
 great scholar the furrows are very deep 
 and crooked, " and numerous, the cere- 
 bral surface, "the seat of conscious 
 mental life, has become enormously 
 enlarged in area. " 
 
 *"The psychoplasm or sentient 
 material forming the psychological me- 
 dium from which the soul derives its 
 structure and its powers." LEWES, 
 "Problems of Life and Mind," vol. i., 
 p. 111.
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 this new life? As was true with 
 the other kingdoms, it could not 
 come from below. That which is 
 born of flesh is flesh that which 
 is born of mineral is mineral; 
 that which is born of vegetable is 
 vegetable ; that which is born of 
 animal is animal; that which is 
 born of the natural man is natu- 
 ral man ; and that which is born 
 of the spiritual man is spiritual. 
 Again, the life came from above. 
 It came with the new birth of a 
 spiritual type-life into the evolu- 
 tionary order through the heredi- 
 tary chain in strict accordance 
 with the law followed in the pre- 
 ceding kingdoms. The spiritual 
 type-life was imparted to and in- 
 carnated in the prepared psycho- 
 plasm, or the spiritual protoplasm. 
 In this combination in the inner, 
 the spiritual realm, this life has 
 the power to reorganize after His 
 nature, after the pattern that goes 
 29
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 with each type-life has within 
 Himself the power of imparting 
 spiritual life, that is, of the mul- 
 tiplication of corresponding indi- 
 vidualities. 
 
 None of the previous transitions 
 from a lower to a higher kingdom 
 has taken place within historic 
 times. The cradle at Bethlehem 
 flashes a searchlight down the 
 spiral stairway up which man has 
 come from platform to platform, 
 kingdom to kingdom. Here we 
 see clearly that the type-life of 
 the kingdom of the spiritual man 
 is born from above into the hered- 
 itary chain of evolution. Many 
 times, and in many ways, He de- 
 clares I am " from above. " He is 
 born a natural man, and yet pos- 
 sesses the life of the kingdom next 
 higher, and proceeds to lift the 
 natural man by a new birth into 
 the kingdom of the spiritual man.
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 He is born the son of man and the 
 son of God, bridging the chasm 
 with His own being. 
 
 Again and again He says, "I 
 am the life "' ; "I have come that 
 ye may have life"; except ye 
 partake of Me "ye have no life 
 in you." He calls Himself the 
 "bread of life, " "the water of 
 life. " This would all be meaning- 
 less were Christ talking about the 
 life of the kingdom of the natural 
 man which all now have and have 
 had. 
 
 As the spiritual type-life lifts 
 the natural man into the spiritual 
 kingdom, so the type-life of the 
 natural man lifted the animal into 
 the kingdom of the natural man, 
 and the animal type-life lifted the 
 vegetable, and the vegetable type- 
 life lifted the mineral. 
 
 There is no break in the golden 
 thread that runs through all this
 
 NEXT STEP 11? EVOLUTION 
 
 series of development from the 
 mineral world up to the new crea- 
 ture in Christ Jesus. There is 
 nothing in this last development 
 contrary to nature; it follows 
 along exactly the same laws of 
 natural unfoldment as did the 
 other kingdoms. The law of con- 
 tinuity holds.* Christ is born 
 
 * Alfred Russell Wallace, who was 
 joint discoverer with Darwin of evolu- 
 tion, and is its greatest living expo- 
 nent, in his book "Darwinism," p. 474, 
 shows the fallacy as to new causes in- 
 volving any breach of continuity these 
 new causes embracing vegetable life, 
 animal life, and the higher powers of 
 man. He says, pp. 475 and 476 : 
 
 "These faculties [the higher powers 
 of the natural man] could not possibly 
 have been developed by means of the 
 same laws which have determined the 
 progressive development of the organic 
 world in general, and also of man's 
 physical organism. . . . Still more 
 surely can we refer to it [the spiritual 
 world] those progressive manifestations 
 of life in the vegetable, the animal, and
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 really into the kingdom of the nat- 
 ural man, and the natural man is 
 born into the spiritual kingdom, 
 through Christ, the type-life. In 
 this last stage of man's ascent, as 
 in the previous ones, nature makes 
 "no leap." "Think not," says 
 Christ, " that I have come to de- 
 stroy the law ; I have not come to 
 destroy, but to fulfil." He came 
 to carry on His work in harmony 
 with the processes of the universe. 
 What is law but the method that 
 the immanent God, everywhere 
 and forever, pursues in His work? 
 
 man." Also, in "Natural Selection," 
 p. 185, he tells us that the advance of 
 man is due not to the survival of the 
 fittest, but to those " glorious qualities 
 which raise us so immeasurably above 
 our fellow animals and at the same 
 time afford us the surest proof that 
 there are other and higher existences 
 than ourselves, from whom these qual- 
 ities may have been derived, and toward 
 whom we may be ever tending." 
 3 33
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 True, segments of the circle He 
 follows are easily out of the reach 
 of our vision. Huxley tells us 
 that he has no doubt that even on 
 the physical plane, most impor- 
 tant work is being done far beyond 
 the reach of the most powerful 
 microscope. He might have said, 
 and kept easily within bounds, 
 the important work. 
 
 The crystal is matter plus the 
 principle of crystallization; so 
 the plant, the animal, the natural 
 man always the creature of the 
 kingdom below with the plus sign, 
 for a birth is an unfoldrnent and 
 something more. And so, the 
 Christ life takes the character, 
 the soul, the spirit of the natu- 
 ral man, which have developed 
 through the ages takes them 
 through a new birth, this time 
 with man's consent. "Marvel 
 not that I say unto you, ye must 
 be born again." "Verily, verily, 
 34
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 I say unto thee, except a man be 
 born from above, he can not see 
 the kingdom of God " (John iii. 
 3). Ye are "babes in Christ," 
 "Ye are new creatures." We 
 become heirs "of God through 
 Christ," crying "Abba, Father." 
 " In love's hour Eternal Love con- 
 ceives in us the child of God" 
 through the spiritual type-life of 
 Christ Jesus. 
 
 Christ could not have been more 
 explicit or more scientifically ex- 
 act in declaring Himself the type- 
 life of the spiritual man. "Iain 
 the door, " " the way," " the life " ; 
 "no man can come to the Father 
 but by me." "He that hath the 
 Son hath life ; and he that hath 
 not the Son of God hath not life " ; 
 he may be a Caesar leading armies 
 against Pornpey, or a Cicero de- 
 claiming his matchless oration 
 against Cataline, and yet be dead. 
 35
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 In the inspired picture-history 
 of creation, an Adam is the type- 
 life of the kingdom of the natural 
 man; in the New Testament, 
 Christ is presented in every way 
 as the type-life of the kingdom 
 of the spiritual man. " The first 
 man Adam was made a living soul ; 
 the last Adam was made a quick- 
 ening spirit. Howbeit that was 
 not first which is spiritual, but 
 that which is natural ; and after- 
 ward that which is spiritual " (1 
 Cor. xv. 45, 46). 
 
 Here, also, the law of conform- 
 ity to type is manifest. Each 
 type-life is perfect, but those who 
 are born through the type-life 
 begin at the bottom ; the " fall " 
 is great from the type -life to the 
 beginning of growth in the next 
 higher kingdom. But from that 
 onward the battle of evolution is 
 to secure likeness to the type. 
 86
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 " We all, with open face beholding 
 as in a glass the glory of the Lord, 
 are changed into the same image 
 from glory to glory" (2 Cor. iii. 
 18). We shall be "conformed to 
 the image of his Son " (Rom. viii. 
 29) . " As we have borne the image 
 of the earthy, we shall also bear 
 the image of the heavenly " (1 Cor. 
 xv. 49). After the night is over 
 we shall awake in His likeness. 
 
 Newton said that he made a 
 splendid guess at the universal 
 law of gravitation when he saw 
 the apple fall. Why may it not 
 be permissible for us to guess, 
 from the law of conformity to 
 type, that in every kingdom the 
 new creature carries with it the 
 pattern of its type-life, and that 
 after this pattern, in the lower 
 kingdoms, the accompanying cells 
 strive to weave a nature corre- 
 sponding with its kingdom, and 
 in the kingdom of the spiritual 
 37
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 man the Holy Spirit strives to 
 weave the nature of the spiritual 
 man?* 
 
 In the lower kingdoms it is 
 a survival of the fiyhtest, in the 
 highest a survival of the fittest, 
 the struggle for life for ourselves 
 merging into a stmggle for life for 
 others. Even among men in the 
 earlier days, to discover the great- 
 est man, the measuring-string was 
 placed around the muscle. That 
 was the age of Hercules. Then 
 the time came when the measur- 
 ing-string was placed around the 
 head. That was the age of Bacon 
 
 * " After watching the process hour 
 by hour [in the semi-fluid globule of 
 protoplasm of the embryo] one is almost 
 involuntarily possessed by the notion 
 that some more subtle aid to vision than 
 an achromatic would show the hidden 
 artist, with his plan before him, stri- 
 ving with skilful manipulation to per- 
 fect work. " HUXLEY, " Lay Sernums," 
 p. 261.
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 and Shakespeare. But the time 
 coraes in the rapidly advancing 
 future when the measuring-string 
 will be placed around the heart, 
 and he who measures most there 
 will be most conformed to the Mas- 
 ter, for he is greatest who most 
 fully gives himself for others. 
 
 Evolution goes on, hereafter, in 
 the inner and upper world, out- 
 side and beyond our vision, ma- 
 king many and many variations 
 doubtless, as in the lower realms. 
 In the Father's spiritual house 
 also are many mansions. We are 
 stepping from the physiological 
 to the psychological, from body 
 and mind to spirit. As in all pre- 
 vious growth, the latest type-life 
 is reappearing in His generation 
 in the " new creatures " of His 
 kingdom. 
 
 To-day, in the unfolding em- 
 bryo of every child, nature mar-
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 velously and clearly retells the 
 history of the evolution of the 
 physical nature of the human race 
 from the one-celled moneron to 
 the billion-celled man. For the 
 embryo of the child is a historic 
 map, done in flesh and blood, of 
 the evolution of man, of the forms 
 he has assumed, broadly speaking, 
 as he climbed nature's stairway.* 
 But more than man's physical 
 nature was evolved. 
 
 * Romanes, in "Darwin and After 
 Darwin," chap, iv., says that the em- 
 bryo is a resume or recapitulation of 
 the successive phases through which 
 the being has been developed with ex- 
 planable omissions. On p. 102 he tells 
 of the young salamander that is so 
 complete in its gills shortly before birth 
 that if it is removed from the womb 
 and placed in water it will be able to 
 live, breathing like a fish through its 
 gills. 
 
 40
 
 II 
 
 The physical nature of man has 
 perdured through heredity, com- 
 ing up through the vegetable 
 kingdom, the animal kingdom, 
 and the kingdom of the natural 
 man, no break in the chain from 
 the unicellular monera and ameba 
 the protozoa. The oak grows 
 from the acorn that has in it a 
 cell which has in it the vitality 
 and pattern of the parent tree. 
 That cell divides and subdivides 
 into the millions of cells that 
 weave the new oak, but there is 
 not one cell of the millions that 
 did not come from the single cell 
 given to the acorn by the parent 
 oak; so back through the chain, 
 along which that oak has come, 
 41
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 through the myriads of centuries 
 from the plant type -life; not one 
 of these cells in all the ages out 
 of line, not a break in the chain, no 
 chasm, no leap. Every twig, 
 every leaf in the wide-spreading 
 oak, has its thread unbroken 
 through the ages back to the prim- 
 ordial cell back to the original 
 that came from above. 
 
 But the outward evolution 
 that of the physical marvelous 
 beyond thought, is comparatively 
 insignificant. The chief evolution 
 has been and is within. The 
 scientist is unscientific who ignores 
 the greater evolution and builds his 
 explanatory system wholly on the 
 lesser on the least. Psychology 
 is also a science. Has nature one 
 method for the development of the 
 physical part of man's being, and 
 another for the development of 
 the non-material and spiritual?
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 Nature is not divided. What 
 means the hereditary likeness, 
 mental and spiritual not less 
 marked than the physical? These 
 marks often skip many generations 
 and then reappear again in full. 
 They can not, therefore, be the 
 result of education or imitation. 
 Nor is it easy to believe that they 
 were placed within us by a direct 
 act of creation, as the old-fash- 
 ioned theological professor taught 
 that God mixed the fossils with 
 the plastic stones at creation, 
 somewhat as a cook mixes raisins 
 and other fruits in the dough for 
 her plum-pudding. 
 
 What means the gradual devel- 
 opment in the brain of the cere- 
 brum and cereballum, the organs 
 of the soul powers, enlarging from 
 generation to generation? These 
 are scarcely visible in the lowest 
 animals. They become larger as 
 we advance up the animal scale 
 43
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 of intelligence, or psychic power ; 
 large in the ape, who came far 
 along the same line that man 
 came ; four times as large in the 
 lowest Zulu as in the ape, but far 
 larger in the European and Amer- 
 ican civilized man thus slow- 
 ly made perfect through awful 
 struggles and sufferings, painfully 
 growing a million years or more. 
 Is it not then reasonable to believe 
 that there is a corresponding 
 psychic or soul development from 
 generation to generation in the 
 unseen individuality, the ego, 
 which uses the cerebrum and cer- 
 ebellum as organs; that up the 
 spiral stairway of evolution the 
 whole man has come his person- 
 ality, with its soul powers, and 
 the physical organs of these pow- 
 ers in the brain, and the entire 
 physical man? 
 
 Is it hard to believe that our 
 44
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 individuality has been born and 
 reborn through the line of ances- 
 try back to the type-lives, and 
 through them back to the " begin- 
 ning," when God took of His own 
 life to develop, through ages of 
 conflict, personalities other than 
 His own who would, of their own 
 free-will, choose goodness? Is it 
 hard to believe that at every suc- 
 cessive birth each parent has 
 placed his stamp upon the indi- 
 viduality, but that the individual- 
 ity has perdured being reborn 
 again and again into successive 
 higher kingdoms? Does it seem 
 hard to believe that we should be 
 born many times? Is it then 
 harder to believe that we should 
 be born after we have lived than 
 that we should be born when we 
 have not lived? The profoundest 
 mystery is in the first birth, in 
 which we all believe. And why 
 should it be thought by us incred- 
 45
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 ible that, with the mingling of the 
 parental cells, the individuality 
 exactly fitted should be reborn in 
 the line of heredity, receiving the 
 parental stamp, being attracted by 
 the law which answers to that law 
 which guides the atom unerringly 
 to its place in the crystal that 
 same law wonderfully exalted? 
 Whatever and wherever character 
 is, it must be obedient to the law 
 that draws it, for the law of at- 
 traction is even more irresistible 
 in the inner world than is the law 
 of gravitation in the outer world. 
 Every man as he comes to his 
 birth comes to his own place ; in 
 a profound sense he chooses his 
 parents and his surroundings. 
 As he was, he is, plus his birth- 
 gain and his growth through con- 
 sent and volition; his past leads 
 him. 
 
 And in this last transition each 
 man is conscious that his individ-
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 uality continues, altho he passes 
 from one kingdom into the next. 
 The dictum of science is "no 
 leap, no break " continuity. 
 Then it is reasonable to believe 
 that the individuality will con- 
 tinue through succeeding future 
 changes, as it has continued these 
 millions of years through the suc- 
 cessive past changes. It would 
 require much credulity to believe 
 that nature has travailed in pain 
 these untold ages to develop a 
 personality that would of its own 
 free-will choose goodness, only to 
 destroy that personality as soon 
 as made. John Fiske has well 
 said : * " The materialistic as- 
 sumption that . . . the life of the 
 soul . . . ends with the life of 
 the body, is perhaps the most 
 colossal instance of assumption 
 that is known in the history of 
 philosophy." 
 
 * " The Destiny of Man," p. 110. 
 
 47
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 That was a provincial notion 
 about the universe which was held 
 before Copernicus' s time the be- 
 lief that the sun, planets, stars, 
 all revolved around the earth. 
 Copernicus was called the de- 
 stroyer of faith and bitterly de- 
 nounced. His idea made the earth 
 but a speck, and the Milky Way 
 billions of miles long the mere 
 yard-stick of the universe. All 
 this has immensely enlarged faith 
 did not destroy it. Darwin, 
 too, was called the destroyer of 
 faith; but now we begin to see 
 that evolution, in giving man 
 countless eons of growth, instead 
 of keeping him a creature of yes- 
 terday, bounded by the cradle and 
 grave, has immensely enlarged 
 faith, and beyond thought has 
 added to the dignity of man. 
 
 The new birth of the natural 
 man into the kingdom of the spiri- 
 48
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 tual man, the reborning of his 
 personality, making him a child 
 of God after the type of Christ, 
 is the tap-root of Christianity, is 
 the chief artery. Cut that and 
 all is gone. Keep that and let 
 the " new creature " grow toward 
 his fulness, then Christ is recre- 
 ated, reincarnated in him, and 
 through him He is manifest again 
 among men. 
 
 49
 
 Ill 
 
 At each succeeding birth the 
 individuality, to thrive, must be 
 in harmony with its changed sur- 
 roundings, and the cells that 
 swarm in every living body strug- 
 gle to bring this to pass. It is the 
 business of the cell to obey the 
 pushings of the governing force 
 in the organization to which it be- 
 longs. The plant needs water, 
 minerals, air, sunshine. Its at- 
 tendant cells hear the cry of their 
 master and build roots into the 
 ground and branches into the air, 
 and weave leaves into lungs and 
 laboratories. Note a vine in some 
 cave how it works its Avay 
 toward the hole through which 
 sunshine is streaming, and how it 
 50
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 causes some roots to build out 
 toward a vein of water; others 
 toward a skeleton many feet away 
 and along the bones of that skele- 
 ton hungering and thirsting for 
 minerals, water, light, heat. 
 Hungering and thirsting asking, 
 knocking the plant receives. 
 Seek and ye shall find ; strive and 
 it shall be yours. This is the 
 law in the plant life, the law in 
 the animal life, in the life of the 
 natural man, in the life of the 
 spiritual man. 
 
 After ages of need in the ani- 
 mal kingdom and tireless struggle, 
 guided by an intelligence im- 
 planted in the cells, at last the 
 eye was built, so the ear, and so 
 the other senses, that the animal 
 might have its desires and feed 
 on the surrounding waves of light, 
 waves of sound, and have the 
 advantage of odor, of taste, and 
 touch. Thus : the personality had 
 51
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 the inner capacity to enjoy sound, 
 and to take advantage of this 
 in the struggle for existence. 
 There was an outer world of 
 sound, but there was no connect- 
 ing instrumentality. The inner 
 life blindly yearned for harmony 
 with its surroundings ; the cells 
 hearkened and built the ear. It 
 took ages, but in an eternity and 
 a boundless universe to work in 
 what are a million years or ten 
 million years more or less? 
 
 Seek is the law of growth. Its 
 suggestion we see in the plant 
 working its way toward the sun- 
 shine. This law comes to perfec- 
 tion in the prayer of the spirit. 
 I desire, therefore I pray, there- 
 fore I have. In a deep sense, as 
 a man thinketh so he is. The 
 universe of cells within each 
 man calls him master. Ye are 
 gods; kings upon thrones; your 
 slightest wish is heard, your eai- 
 52
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 nest persistent desire compels 
 obedience. Answer to prayer is 
 a growth, a building up or down 
 to what you wish. Wishing is 
 asking. Ask what you will and 
 from that instance receiving you 
 receive. Here is the Christian 
 doctrine of answer to prayer ; here 
 is Christian science ; here also are 
 psychological control, mind-heal- 
 ing, mesmerism. 
 
 Do I ask, longingly, Why was 
 God more near to Abraham and 
 Moses than to me? If Enoch 
 walked with God why not I? He 
 who so questions has already his 
 hand upon the latch of the door 
 of the new kingdom. 
 
 Translate John xiv. into the 
 language of evolution: Let not 
 your spirit have unrest. In the 
 inner kingdom are many stages 
 and forms of growth. If it were 
 not so I would have told you. I 
 go within, away from your outer
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 sense of sight, of hearing, that ye 
 may more truly yearn, seek after, 
 that which is spiritual, and thus 
 by exercise of your spiritual pow- 
 ers grow inward and upward to 
 God's plane and know God; then 
 my Father and I will be able to 
 abide in you, and I can more truly 
 manifest myself to you, and then 
 ye shall know that I am in my 
 Father, ye in Me, and I in you. 
 Now you see Me on your plane 
 of knowing; then you will see 
 Me on my plane of knowing ; now 
 you see through a glass darkly, 
 then you will see and know as you 
 are seen and known ; that is, you 
 will be a creature of the spiritual 
 kingdom, and will be equipped 
 with its powers of knowing. 
 
 Christ can never fully come into 
 a man until the man has grown 
 up to the level of spiritual things. 
 It is a sensuous generation that 
 seeks to be satisfied with con- 
 54
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 solation through the physical 
 senses. 
 
 All of our faculties carry their 
 own demonstrations of truth up 
 to the level of their development. 
 To the pure and loving, purity 
 and love need no witnesses. Every 
 man has had placed in his hand a 
 latch-key to the beauty and wis- 
 dom to all of the excellences of 
 the universe; but there is only 
 one way of using that latch-key 
 effectively. We must grow to a 
 level with the latch. I must have 
 an eye fitted for the landscape, 
 and must have a poetic soul be- 
 fore the landscape can read its 
 poetry to me. I may believe that 
 Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is 
 music because a master of music 
 has told me so; that is belief 
 based on authority; or, I may 
 measure the waves of sound and 
 scientifically demonstrate that it 
 55
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 is music : But such evidences are 
 beggarly, and praise based on 
 them would drive a composer 
 mad. But let me hunger and 
 thirst after music ; seek, pray for 
 musical sight and soul until I 
 develop up to the level of Bee- 
 thoven's Symphony; then as 
 quickly as I hear it I exclaim: 
 " That is mu?ic ! " Do you ask : 
 "Who told you?" I answer: 
 "No one; I know it I" My latch- 
 key enters, for I am on a level 
 with the latch. I asked, I sought, 
 I knocked, until I grew up into 
 the musical world. I must grow 
 up to God before I can know Him ; 
 I must grow up to Christ before I 
 can see Him. The pure in heart 
 shall see and hear spiritual things. 
 I must be on God's level before 
 even the lowly flower can tell me 
 the thought that was in His mind 
 when He created it. 
 
 If any man will do His will he 
 66
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 shall grow the character that will 
 enable him to know of the doc- 
 trine whether it be of God or of 
 man; truth is self-demonstrable 
 up to its level. 
 
 Seek is the law of growth in all 
 kingdoms; and it is the law of 
 development and of the adjust- 
 ment of the feeders through which 
 each kingdom asserts itself to its 
 creatures and gives them their 
 food and consolation. Who has 
 not smiled many times at the 
 serio-hurnorous reflection of Rob- 
 ert Louis Stevenson on hearing 
 of the death of Matthew Arnold : 
 " So, Arnold is dead ! I am sorry ; 
 he won't like God." There is a 
 profoundly solemn truth under 
 this witticism. 
 
 There is health for the plant in 
 
 sun-rays ; the plant in the cave 
 
 had need of light, and its cells 
 
 heard the cry and built toward 
 
 57
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 the light. That capacity for light 
 and that groping of the cells 
 proved the existence of the sun. 
 The conscious feeling after God 
 among people everywhere proves 
 the existence of God and of the 
 spiritual world. 
 
 The new-born child must adjust 
 its lungs to the atmosphere into 
 which it comes or it must die. 
 It hereafter must eat and drink 
 with its mouth, breathe with its 
 lungs ; it must have new feeders. 
 The bird, as it chips its way out 
 of the egg, adjusts itself to its 
 new surroundings. It is a hard 
 trial often for a child to be weaned, 
 yet it is love that does it. It is 
 done to give it more abundant life, 
 not less. 
 
 The spiritual man has meat and 
 drink that the world knows not 
 of. He is willing to lose his life, 
 and thereby saves it. He is care-
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOL UTION 
 
 f ul for nothing, and thereby has 
 all things. The meek inherit even 
 the earth. It becomes safe for 
 a man to have riches only when 
 he can easily do without them 
 When the feeders of our soul are 
 fastened upon God, it becomes a 
 small thing for us to be judged of 
 man really fearing praise more 
 than blame. To such a one re- 
 venge, malice, passion, appetite, 
 grow empty. Christ spoke a sim- 
 ple truth, not a paradox, when He 
 said : " They shall lay their hands 
 upon you and persecute you, and 
 ye shall be betrayed both by 
 parents and brethren and kins- 
 folks and friends; and some of 
 you they will cause to be put to 
 death, and ye shall be hated of 
 all men for my name's sake, but 
 not a hair of your head shall per- 
 ish." He who has been born into 
 the kingdom of the spiritual man 
 knows that all these things can
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 not harm one iota of that new na- 
 ture which is to be henceforth for- 
 ever the whole of himself. He 
 leaves all for all. He conquers 
 desire by the deepest possible 
 desire. He has learned the art 
 of communing with, correspond- 
 ing with, feeding upon, the inner 
 world. He walks and talks with 
 God. In all this is the truest 
 philosophy we overcome the 
 lower by finding that we do not 
 need it. We conquer by repla- 
 cing ; we are weaned from depend- 
 ence upon the kingdom of the nat- 
 ural man by finding far more 
 satisfying meat and drink than 
 what we knew of before. 
 
 This is the meaning of self- 
 denial, fasting, repentance, suffer- 
 ing the weaning of the feeders 
 from the old to the new environ- 
 mentthe feeders that give food 
 and consolation. We enter into 
 the kingdom of the spiritual man 
 60
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 as the babe enters into the king- 
 dom of the natural man. Every 
 new creature grows up from the 
 grave of the old. Up the stairs 
 of holy patience we climb the 
 heights of the inner kingdom. 
 Our will henceforth is to yield 
 our will, but the sensuous man 
 contests every inch with the spiri- 
 tual. The perishing of the old 
 man day by day is painful, and so 
 is the renewal of the inner, for 
 birth also is painful. We learn 
 to love love, hate hate, and fear 
 only fear ; but every move upward 
 has in it birth-pangs. We are 
 in the soul's gymnasium on its 
 battle-field. The creature was 
 made subject to vanity for a 
 cause. * Says Ruskin : " I do not 
 
 * " It is an inevitable deduction from 
 the hypothesis of evolution that races 
 of sentient creatures could have come 
 into existence under no other condi- 
 tions [than those of pains and pleas- 
 61
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 wonder often at what men suffer, 
 but I wonder at what they lose." 
 
 I wonder rather that they hesi- 
 tate to suffer when I think of 
 what is to be gained. Corrective 
 experiences are repellant medi- 
 cines, not always in capsules of 
 honey, but they are medicines. 
 
 On the plane of this lower life 
 we can not explain suffering. On 
 the plane of the egg life we can 
 not explain the breaking of the 
 egg. For the explanation we 
 must look up to the singing-bird 
 in the branches. Paul speaks in 
 the language of evolution when 
 he tells of the law of the spiritual 
 man fighting against the law of 
 the members; the fighting and 
 the suffering are essential for 
 growth. I have made great gain 
 when I have learned what Christ 
 meant when He said, "Seek ye 
 
 ures]." HERBERT SPENCER, " Princi- 
 ples of Psychology," section 124.
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 first the kingdom of God, and 
 his righteousness, and all these 
 things [temporal consolation] will 
 be added unto you," that is, when 
 you conquer the lower things by 
 the higher, then, and only then, 
 the lower yields the helpfulness 
 that is in Christ. 
 
 It is a marvelous way, marvel- 
 ous beyond imagination, in which 
 the new creature of the next 
 higher kingdom is developed, a 
 spiritual man is created, a being is 
 made after the type of Christ and 
 in whom Christ manifests Him- 
 self. 
 
 It doth not yet appear what we 
 shall be, but when He appears we 
 shall be like Him, and He can 
 never so appear to us until we are 
 like Him. This is the end toward 
 which all evolution on the earth 
 has tended. Nature has taken 
 millions of years and endless
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 struggles to produce the new 
 spiritual man. All things have 
 moved together for the develop- 
 ment of his personality, his psy- 
 chic nature, and his body, the 
 body to be, as well as the body 
 that is. The end is the person- 
 ality reborn through the Holy 
 Spirit into the Christ type, and 
 with the Christ nature on whom 
 the henceforth intimate God 
 presses on all sides, within and 
 without, as an atmosphere in 
 whom he consciously lives, moves, 
 and has his being. God hence- 
 forth becomes his conscious envi- 
 ronment from whom he receives 
 all nourishment and consolation. 
 
 To be a Christian is not to get 
 somewhere, but to be something, 
 to be recreated in the image of 
 the Father, the living God, after 
 the pattern Christ Jesus. 
 
 The value of this creation can 
 be measured only by the ages of 
 64
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 conflict that it has taken to pro- 
 duce such a free individuality. 
 
 We see all around us those 
 in whom is being wrought out 
 through the divine spirit of Christ 
 a spiritual nature; a true son 
 of God, of immortality. How 
 strange it is to look into a human 
 face, and to look into human eyes, 
 and to think that a son of the liv- 
 ing God is veiled there to think 
 of the greatness of that creature, 
 for the accomplishment of which 
 all creation on earth has been in 
 travail for these untold ages ! 
 
 Often not anything extraor- 
 dinary impresses us, as we look 
 upon a comrade in whom this 
 Christ nature has begun ; but wait : 
 we now see this kingdom of the 
 soul only in its germ. The bulb 
 of the tiger lily is not over pretty, 
 but to the eyes that see the possi- 
 bilities of the tiger lily, that bulb 
 is a poem. The step from the 
 5 65
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 highest morality of the natural 
 man to the lowest round in the 
 kingdom of the spiritual man is a 
 stupendous one. John the Bap- 
 tist was the greatest of those born 
 of women greatest of those in 
 the kingdom of the natural man 
 but the least in the new kingdom 
 of the spiritual man is greater than 
 he. 
 
 God broods over every soul, 
 waiting, ever waiting, for desire, 
 for invitation. Seeking begins 
 and continues growth in the inner 
 kingdom. It is the first and last 
 round in the ladder that Jacob 
 saw, and all the intervening 
 rounds. As a man seeketh, so he 
 becometh. The one thing needful 
 is not the power of logic, or the 
 courage to step out on the conclu- 
 sions of syllogisms; it is right 
 dispositions, intention, choice. 
 The willingness to heed the inner 
 66
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 voice opens the door to Christ the 
 type-life, to the new birth of the 
 personality, and to the beginning 
 of the accompanying new nature 
 by which each personality grows 
 into correspondence with its new 
 surroundings. 
 
 It is not necessary to have 
 heard with the outer ear the words 
 of God or the name of Christ. 
 All that is necessary is within 
 the reach of any man in any age 
 or clime, within the reach of an 
 Abraham or Buddha, or Confu- 
 cius, of a Paul, or Maimonides, or 
 Savanorola, or Luther, before or 
 after Christ was in the flesh. 
 Come whosoever will. God lis- 
 tens to prayer with His ear on the 
 man's inner heart, not at his lips, 
 and an answer to prayer is the 
 growth of the inner nature into 
 the fitness to receive the request. 
 The heat and light which the plant 
 absorbs measure its capacity, not 
 67
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 the ability of the sun. Every 
 soul gets what it is fitted to re- 
 ceive. He that willeth to do the 
 will of God develops the nature 
 that is the touchstone and the 
 absorbent of spiritual truth. By 
 the law of our being we grow a 
 fitness for that which we desire 
 an earnest desire is bound to re- 
 veal itself in action. "He that 
 keepeth my words, and doeth my 
 will, he it is that loveth me." 
 We grow by seeking; we confess 
 by doing, for deeds are the inter- 
 preters of the inner growth. 
 
 What we love fastens itself to 
 our spirits ; we are in bondage to 
 that we love. We set our affec- 
 tions on God, but He is perfect 
 wisdom, and perfect right, and 
 perfect love, hence this bondage 
 is the perfection of liberty ; it is 
 the bondage of pure intellect, of 
 pure heart, love. This is a per- 
 fect servitude that leads to full
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 freedom. Here is the turning- 
 point, the crux willingness to 
 transfer the feeders of our nature 
 from the lower kingdom to the 
 higher. Hence Christ's constant 
 insistence, Except ye hate (cease 
 depending upon) the world, food, 
 clothing, the loves of the kingdom 
 of the natural man, ye can not 
 enter into the kingdom of the 
 spiritual man, can not live in this 
 kingdom. It is a change of cen- 
 ter from self to God, from the 
 world of sense to the world of 
 spirit. 
 
 Do not say that you can not be 
 born again. You can and must. 
 It is natural to step into this king- 
 dom, as natural as growth is. 
 The natural response of the heart 
 is Christian, says Tertullian. Our 
 experience supports and justifies 
 this necessity. 
 
 Choice persisted in means
 
 NEXT STEP IX EVOLUTION 
 
 growth of the spiritual nature 
 character and this is that crys- 
 tallization of faith that removes 
 mountains. This inner life is 
 a growth, slow growth, but a 
 growth, and with the growth is 
 a corresponding development of 
 brain substances, and which in its 
 turn measures its growth. 
 
 As the hart, the pursued hart, 
 panteth for the water-brook, so 
 yearneth, hungereth, thirsteth 
 after God the soul that is born 
 and grows into the new kingdom. 
 Holy desire ever leads the way. 
 Seeking is exercise, and exercise 
 is always the law of growth in the 
 inner as in the outer world. 
 
 But man must be good because 
 it is good to be good, not because 
 he escapes from wrath, or receives 
 some benefit. The kingdom of 
 heaven is goodness, and all good- 
 ness leads that way. Christ is 
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 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 the way because He is good. 
 There must be another conceptiou 
 of God than that against which 
 the Buddhists warn us, that He is 
 a "cow to be milked." 
 
 The great original sculptors of 
 Greece whom all the world now 
 studies, as Emerson would say, 
 stayed at home to study, and did 
 not bother much with going to 
 Egypt or Mesopotamia. God is 
 a re warder of those that diligently 
 seek Him, not by imitation, not 
 outwardly, not with the noise of 
 words that men may hear, but in 
 the closet, in the silence of the 
 inner chamber of the soul. Every 
 man must find himself, and be 
 himself. 
 
 There is no kingdom of heaven 
 where there is no kingly soul. In 
 a sense color comes with the eye- 
 sight. Until the ear is created, 
 where is the world of sound? 
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 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 Who by searching could find it? 
 It exists only to those who have 
 the corresponding faculty. If 
 there is a God, why does He not 
 show Himself, and why does He 
 not make the spiritual world man- 
 ifest as He does this world? This 
 He does do exactly, but each after 
 its own order. Where there is a 
 corresponding sense there is vis- 
 ion, hearing, or touch; the other 
 senses are each but the shadow 
 of the corresponding inner sense. 
 The law of the one suggests the 
 law of the other. 
 
 God hid Himself behind the 
 world of our physical senses that 
 we, free of all compulsion, might 
 develop the spiritual man; when 
 that is developed He can safely 
 reveal His infinite power and wis- 
 dom and goodness. Who could 
 make free choice in the conscious 
 presence of an infinite one? 
 72
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 Nor is this nature transferable, 
 or to be extemporized. If no oil 
 is in my lamp when the moment 
 of the trial judgment comes, I am 
 helpless. Will or wish at the mo- 
 ment is not sufficient. If there 
 is no development of the inner 
 nature I am not a child of the 
 inner kingdom, and can not be 
 recognized by the Master. He 
 can never manifest Himself to 
 me. Many will say in that day: 
 " Lord, Lord, have we not proph- 
 esied in thy name? And in thy 
 name have cast out devils, and in 
 thy name have done many won- 
 derful works? " but who will not 
 have the spiritual nature which 
 alone is the recognizable visible 
 substance in the inner world. 
 
 It is choice that exalts in the 
 spiritual kingdom, not birth . Out 
 of stones God can make children 
 of Abraham on the physical 
 side; but even omnipotence and 
 73
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 omniscience are not able against 
 free choice to make one in deed and 
 truth an Israelite. Consent of 
 the soul is the essential element, 
 otherwise we have an automaton, 
 and in the inner kingdom there 
 are no automatons ; that is a world 
 of free spirit. 
 
 Except your righteousness shall 
 exceed that of the priests and of 
 sacraments and of the memorizing 
 of creeds, ye can not enter. 
 
 The only thing that profits is 
 the new birth into the new king- 
 dom the birth and growth of the 
 Christ life. A man may say 
 scores of Ave Marias and pater- 
 nosters daily, visit regularly the 
 communion-table, erect the family 
 altar, and read daily his Bible, 
 yet not have the inner life. He 
 may give his property to feed the 
 poor, and his body to be burned 
 that he may have a tablet in the 
 Hall of Fame, or that he may win 
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 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 a far-off heaven, and yet Christ 
 or the inner kingdom may never 
 have been known to him. 
 
 The most pathetic and pitiful 
 thing in all the world is to see 
 the multitudes striving to get out 
 of the kingdom of the natural 
 man what is not in it. 
 
 The man is father to himself; 
 long before the child is the man 
 was. Long before Abraham was 
 he is. By the acts of his own free- 
 will he determines his place in the 
 universe. The law of attraction 
 in the inner world is as irresisti- 
 ble as the law of gravitation in 
 the outer world. The ego as it 
 comes to its birth in the kingdom 
 of the natural man goes to its 
 own. I can not gravitate by an 
 arbitrary will in the non-material 
 and spiritual world, but I can de- 
 termine my character, and what- 
 ever and wherever that is it must 
 75
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 be obedient to the law that draws 
 it. It goes more certainly and 
 swiftly to its place than the atom 
 in the forming crystal. 
 
 Evolution is a sword that cuts 
 both ways. It chooses, it con- 
 demns. The fittest survive. 
 There are many called but few 
 chosen. 
 
 Punishment comes, but it is 
 largely within; degeneracy is, 
 through persistent wrongdoing, 
 the law of nature, fixed, inevita- 
 ble. If a man will not choose 
 to ascend he loses his power to 
 ascend, and must be reborn. God 
 never abandons a soul. Tho I 
 make my bed in hell thou art 
 there. The soul may lose sight 
 of God, but God never of the 
 soul. 
 
 He lights the sun and sweeps 
 
 the universe that He may find the 
 
 missing coin. He goes after the 
 
 lost sheep, leaving the ninety and 
 
 76
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 nine ; He yearns for the returning 
 prodigal. His is untiring, infinite 
 love. More valuable to Him is 
 the most worthless of men than 
 many sheep to the human shep- 
 herd. There is pain in the Fa- 
 ther's heart until the wanderer 
 returns ; nor will that pain cease 
 until somewhere and somehow in 
 the universe the last wanderer has 
 returned. 
 
 77
 
 IV 
 
 The scientist is short- sigh ted 
 and narrow-sighted who walls 
 science in at the boundary of his 
 senses a mole accounting for 
 phenomena, and leaving out the 
 eye ; a Laura Bridgeinan account- 
 ing for whatever came into her 
 life by her two or three physical 
 
 Foolish wise men, not to know 
 that the surest of all proofs is to 
 be looked for in inner experience ; 
 that the most real things in the 
 world are made clear not by phys- 
 ical proof, but by life! Darwin 
 reached the point where poetry 
 and music were little to him ; yet 
 the world of music and of beauty 
 are more certain than is Mont 
 78
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 Blanc or Mount Washington ; but 
 there is only one way to know 
 them, and that is to grow the fac- 
 ulties of music and beauty. 
 
 To the Roman soldiers who may 
 have heard it, how unsubstantial 
 was the Sermon on the Mount; 
 yet its truths of the brotherhood 
 of man, of the fatherhood of God, 
 of meekness, of loving, of justice, 
 of faith in the inner things, out- 
 lasted the Eoman armies, saw the 
 empire ground to dust, and their 
 speaker, nineteen hundred years 
 afterward, by far the most potent 
 personality that ever lived. The 
 mother's love will outpull gravity, 
 and yet what scientist has chemic- 
 ally analyzed it, or what dissect - 
 ing-knife has revealed its where- 
 abouts? There are brute women 
 to whom this love is "unthink- 
 able," "unknowable," but let 
 them grow the mother-heart, and 
 then they can think it, know it. 
 79
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 Foolish, wise men, ye can dis- 
 cern the shadow of things ; look 
 up and behold the substance! 
 Kochefort said to Gambetta: 
 " Deafness is not politics. " When 
 will scientists learn that true 
 science must have eyes and ears 
 open to all experience within as 
 well as without ? 
 
 Once scientists among moles 
 held a congress, and learnedly re- 
 solved that they would believe in 
 nothing that could not be sub- 
 mitted for proof to their four 
 senses. One learned mole with 
 bated breath said: "There must 
 be something above our four 
 senses. I one day broke through 
 the crust of the earth and felt 
 strange sensations, and had a 
 glimmering in the rudiments 
 called eyes by our older philos- 
 ophers." " Xonsense ! " said a 
 grayhead among them. "Let us 
 80
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 have no transcendentalism ; every- 
 thing that is must be explained 
 by sound, or by touch, or by 
 smell, or by the taste. All this 
 talk of a great central sun with 
 light, making landscapes and from 
 which all things come, we have 
 no way of proving ; and hence to 
 believe it, or to admit it as an 
 element in accounting for things, 
 is unscientific. The scientific 
 method, let us never forget, is to 
 account for all things by the 
 elements which come within the 
 range of our four senses and the 
 reasoning based upon these per- 
 ceptions." 
 
 So it happens that to this day 
 in the cosmic science accepted 
 among moles the sun has nothing 
 to do with the growth of plants, 
 the formation of coal-beds, and 
 the rotation of the seasons. 
 
 How imperfect that history 
 6 81
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 that would content itself with 
 writing a biography of the acorn, 
 and never take into account the 
 oak that comes from the acorn 
 and for which the acorn exists! 
 The oak reveals the acorn ; with- 
 out the oak the acorn is not ex- 
 plicable. How can any one un- 
 derstand the evolution of man 
 and not consider the vastly greater 
 segment of his nature, which is 
 the non-material and spiritual? 
 The scientist believes in the inde- 
 structibility of matter. The step 
 is a short one to the belief in the 
 indestructibility of spirit. He be- 
 lieves in substance infinitely ex- 
 tended ; the step is not a long one 
 to belief in the personality that is 
 infinitely extended. He believes 
 that in all matter is a " thinking 
 substance." Is it harder to be- 
 lieve that over and in all things is 
 a thinking spirit? * The scientist 
 * " We adhere firmly to the pure, un-
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 endows matter with the powers it 
 needs to do all these things, and 
 then says it does all these things. 
 Yet science, when it conies to 
 know, when it comes to take in 
 all the facts, to go deep enough, 
 and wide enough, and far enough, 
 will be the arbiter. Creed, dog- 
 ma, authority, must give way 
 to it. Magellan said: "The 
 Church declares the world is flat, 
 but I have seen its shadow on the 
 moon, and I had rather believe a 
 shadow than the Church." That 
 is true only when the Church 
 makes provision for but a part of 
 the truth, and when science is 
 
 equivocal monism of Spinoza: Matter, 
 or infinitely extended substance, and 
 spirit (or energy), or sensitive and think- 
 ing substance, are the two fundamen- 
 tal attributes or principal properties 
 of the all-embracing divine essence of 
 the world, the universal substance." 
 ERNST HAECKEL, " The Riddle <tf the 
 Universe," p. 21.
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 true to itself. The assumptions 
 of science and the assumptions 
 of the Church will have to be cor- 
 rected by experience, the experi- 
 ence of the whole man. 
 
 Science has yet so to enlarge 
 its borders that it will grasp a 
 supreme truth like this one : The 
 Christ idea supports our experi- 
 ence more fully, answers more 
 questions, meets more necessities, 
 fills out more completely the 
 deepest aspirations, and awakens 
 higher motives than all other 
 ideas combined. Science is not 
 so far from grasping this great 
 truth as it seems to be.
 
 Christ is not an idealism, but a 
 living, throbbing, visible, audible 
 Being the real Christ ; the body 
 in Galilee was the shadow, the 
 outward shell that could be 
 crushed. The One now coming 
 is the Mighty One who is out of 
 the reach of stones and spears, the 
 type-life and potent King of the 
 kingdom of the spiritual man. 
 And he who hath Him also hath 
 power. " Ye shall receive power " 
 (Acts i. 8). "Stephen, full of 
 faith and power" (Acts vi. 8). 
 "The kingdom of God is not in 
 word, but in power" (1 Cor. iv. 
 20). Says Paul of those at Cor- 
 inth who found fault with him : " I 
 will know not their speech, but 
 85
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 their power " (1 Cor. iv. 19). He 
 who has not power is not of the 
 kingdom of the spiritual man, for 
 " whatsoever is born of God over- 
 cometh the world." This Christ 
 is a present force in the world, 
 producing changes, quickening 
 and directing energies, and must 
 be reckoned with. Christian civ- 
 ilization also proves itself by its 
 power. 
 
 But to see Him this time we 
 must have eyes and ears fitted to 
 recognize the manifestations of 
 the inner kingdom the kingdom 
 of all first causes and real forces. 
 He is not coming with the noise 
 of trumpets, nor with whirlwinds, 
 nor with earthquakes; but with 
 the silence of the growth of the 
 mustard-seed, of the leaven, of 
 the grain of corn reaching up to 
 the blade and full corn in the ear. 
 
 There can be nothing more 
 86
 
 NEXT 8TEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 manifest to-day to the optic nerve 
 of the spiritual man than is this 
 coming. The lightning flashing 
 from the east to the west is not 
 nearly so manifest. 
 
 Every event is alive with His 
 appearing. His presence is the 
 most evident thing in the world, 
 the very splendor of the light 
 hides Him. " Lo, I am with you 
 alway ! " is now known by millions 
 to be a vital, stupendous fact. He 
 is nearer to such a heart than the 
 mother to the babe. 
 
 This coming is in harmony with 
 recognizable law; belief in it is 
 logic, is common sense. It would 
 be extraordinary, miraculous, if 
 He did not now come. The intel- 
 lect is not ignored. We see how 
 God has been able to care for and 
 develop man from the protozoon 
 on up through these numberless 
 ages. Judging His profound 
 wisdom and power and unity of 
 87
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 purpose and love by the result, 
 we reason toward trust that casts 
 out fear and gives prophetic vis- 
 ion. We reason easily and natu- 
 rally that yearning after the more 
 perfect fits the spiritual proto- 
 plasm for the new birth and the 
 new senses, enabling us to know 
 things spiritual as we now know 
 material things. 
 
 When it is our will to do His 
 will, we become the reincarnation 
 of Christ, for "Christ is formed 
 in us." When the dominating 
 ones in a community, in a church, 
 in a nation, in the world, are of 
 this sort, you see Christ reincar- 
 nated in all these. Moses, David, 
 John, Plato, Augustine, Savona- 
 rola, Bunyan, Emerson were great 
 ideal dreamers, but they were also 
 geniuses of common sense. These 
 men were primarily men of faith 
 and great good sense, not of cre- 
 dulity. They had the power and
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 common sense to know that there 
 were voices within, and to with- 
 draw their attention from the 
 voices without and give the real 
 world a chance to be heard. They 
 knew that the universe would fall 
 into chaos and that stars would 
 be ground to dust if these worlds 
 were disobedient to law. They 
 knew that there was an inner uni- 
 verse, and that there were inner 
 laws infinitely more important. 
 They knew it to be the A B C of 
 common sense to conform to these 
 inner laws. Christ was and is the 
 embodiment of common sense, of 
 sanity ; and so His followers be- 
 come as they grow into the new 
 creatures of the kingdom of the 
 spiritual man. 
 
 There are voices within distinct 
 and clear to those who have ears 
 to hear ; clearer than silver bells 
 ringing up in air at midnight.
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 One who has grown this spiritual 
 nature ceases to talk about the in- 
 ward world being silent or hid 
 yet there are clouds and doubts. 
 These things must needs be these 
 assailed Christ to the last. And 
 if angels do not also follow, min- 
 istering to us, it is because we 
 have not reached the plane of 
 spiritual seeing. Help is always 
 near, and it should not be neces- 
 sary for a prophet's hand to touch 
 our eyes to enable us to see the 
 mountains covered with heavenly 
 allies, or to enable us to know the 
 signs of the times. There is no 
 room for fear. Bismarck spoke 
 with the accents of a prophet 
 when he said: "Germany fears 
 nothing but God." The cry is 
 gone out to the ends of the earth : 
 " Great is the soul of man ; make 
 way, make way ! " 
 
 These signs of a mighty change 
 90
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 are deepening and multiplying as 
 we swing into the new century. 
 The Jewish people were to be 
 trodden underfoot until the inner 
 kingdom of love should be estab- 
 lished ; that barbarism of hate is 
 now rapidly dying. 
 
 Were we wise enough, events 
 all around us would be to us 
 prophecies of the coming of the 
 triumphant God, of the kingdom 
 of the spiritual man. 
 
 Watch! By watching we de- 
 velop the ability to discern things 
 beyond the senses. 
 
 Above every cloud the light is 
 now breaking ; the earth is rolling 
 into the dawn of a marvelous 
 day. 
 
 The yoke of ecclesiasticism is 
 giving way to the yoke of Christ. 
 Creed is the memory of the 
 Church. The real yoke of Christ 
 is not a burden; it has wings. 
 He is sweetness and light. Let 
 91
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 criticism have its way. The test- 
 ing-time has come, give it wel- 
 come. A man must now stand a 
 vital Christian, or a hypocrite, 
 or an open enemy that will be a 
 great gain. Creeds to-day are 
 trying to understand one another. 
 Christianity is being reduced to 
 its least common denominator, a 
 living Christ. The Church is 
 finding it harder and harder to 
 think of itself as a great-great- 
 grandchild. It is coming to be- 
 lieve in its present experiences, 
 and to write its own creeds for 
 to-day, and not for to-morrow. 
 Since God is, the Church and the 
 world will not necessarily fall to 
 pieces if they let go their props 
 and scaffoldings. If there be no 
 God, creeds and forms and cere- 
 monies are necessities. A living 
 God is efficient and sufficient. 
 
 In the churches we are many 
 93
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 of us so busy working for God 
 that we do not take time to look 
 around and see God; and are 
 making so great din preaching and 
 praying that we are not able to 
 hear Him talk ; are so busy look- 
 ing far away for signs of Christ's 
 coming that we do not see that 
 He is already here, is the most 
 manifest Being on earth to those 
 who have eyes to see and ears to 
 hear, hidden only by the abun- 
 dance of light. 
 
 Now we begin to see the absurd- 
 ity all of us who believe in the 
 Fatherhood of God and the broth- 
 erhood of man of casting out 
 one another, and are beginning 
 in earnest to join hands to bring 
 about on earth the perfected king- 
 dom of love. "Master, we saw 
 one casting out devils in thy 
 name, and we forbade him because 
 he followeth not us," and the re- 
 proof of long ago we begin to UD-
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 derstand: "Forbid him not, for 
 he that is not against us is on our 
 part." We are rapidly learning 
 that while it may not be possible 
 to be of one mind, it is possible 
 and necessary to be of one heart. 
 We begin to grasp the meaning 
 of Christ when He said that the 
 world would not believe that He 
 was sent of the Father until they 
 saw the vital unity in the inner 
 kingdom that the disciples are 
 one as the Father and Son are one. 
 In the inner kingdom we ask only 
 for right disposition ; this is infi- 
 nitely better even than right think- 
 ing. For those who are rightly 
 disposed go forward and upward 
 even while they sleep. 
 
 Christ is coming to the great 
 business centers, to the real heart 
 of the world. Thus often talks 
 editorially that typical newspaper 
 of the masses, the New York 
 94
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 Evening Journal, to its hundreds 
 of thousands of readers : 
 
 " Think every day of Christ. 
 
 " Every man, apart from all re- 
 ligious belief, can be made a bet- 
 ter man by earnest study and daily 
 contemplation of the character of 
 Jesus. 
 
 " Seen only as a man, His char- 
 acter better than any other is cal- 
 culated to inspire other men. 
 
 " COURAGE, that all men ad- 
 mire. Christ possessed it to the 
 uttermost limit. Modest courage 
 that could not boast, and that 
 death could not move. 
 
 "Kindness, that makes the 
 world habitable. Christ was its 
 personification on earth. 
 
 " Compassion, eloquence, pur- 
 pose unchangeable, charity, for- 
 giveness of others' weakness all 
 may be studied in Christ as in no 
 other man that has ever lived on 
 earth." 
 
 95
 
 NEXT 8TEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 There is no more unfailing sign 
 of the nearness of Christ than the 
 growth of loving beyond the pro- 
 vincialism of the family, the clan, 
 the class, the nation. "Ye are 
 brethren. " All things in common 
 was not an impracticable dream, 
 but a fundamental law of the king- 
 dom of the spiritual Man. We 
 must organize sooner or later on 
 that basis. We are speeding on- 
 ward toward that sun. We feel 
 its growing heat. If we do not 
 love our brethren whom we have 
 seen, how can we love God whom 
 we have not seen? What do ye 
 mean by the communion of saints, 
 ye who pray it Sunday by Sunday? 
 Spell it out. Brotherhood is not 
 a fiction of the imagination. Com- 
 munion is not a Pentecostal fan- 
 tasy. A living Christ is to-day 
 more than ever on earth an aggres- 
 sively unifying force. 
 
 " Inasmuch as ye did it to one 
 96
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 of the least of these," ye did it 
 unto all and to the Father and to 
 Me. The spiritual universe is of 
 one substance, is a unit. "At 
 that day ye shall know that I am 
 in the Father, and ye in me, and 
 I in you." 
 
 Immensely human and natural 
 was Christ's message to man 
 Brotherhood and Fatherhood, and 
 by those tokens we recognize His 
 present footsteps. 
 
 Judge these things as you would 
 the motions of the hands of the 
 clock. Look back a half-dozen 
 centuries and make comparisons. 
 War is recognized more and more 
 as a barbarism, and its end is over 
 yonder hill. The court of nations 
 to settle wrongs is looming above 
 the horizon is already holding 
 its sessions. The nation that 
 loves its fellow nations is also 
 born of God. The Golden Eule 
 7 97
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 is finding its place in international 
 diplomacy. 
 
 The humanities are in order. 
 Over one hundred and seven mil- 
 lion dollars were contributed in 
 the United States for educational 
 and other charities within the last 
 year.* Nearly two million dol- 
 
 * Gifts and bequests, each amount- 
 ing to $5,000 or over, bestowed or be- 
 coming operative in the United States 
 in the following years: 
 
 1893 $29,000,000 
 
 1894 32,000,000 
 
 1895 32,800,000 
 
 1896 27,000,000 
 
 1897 45,000,000 
 
 1898 38,000,000 
 
 1899 62,750,000 
 
 1900 47,500,000 
 
 1901 107,360,000 
 
 Total $421,410,000 
 
 This list excludes the ordinary denom- 
 inational contributions for educational, 
 benevolent, and religious purposes, or 
 State and municipal appropriations to 
 public and sectarian institutions, and 
 the grants of Congress for various meas-
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 lars were given to suffering Gal- 
 veston; and Carnegie's immense 
 benefactions are but one of the 
 many indications of the full dawn- 
 ing of the day of living for others. 
 A single individual the other 
 day, a member of an unpopular 
 race, is wronged in France, and 
 all the world is aroused, and 
 flashes thunderbolts of wrath un- 
 der oceans and across continents 
 until there is a beginning to right 
 the wrong. Mankind is rapidly 
 becoming 
 
 "... one in spirit, and in instinct 
 
 bears along 
 Around the earth's electric circle the 
 
 swift flash of right and wrong." 
 
 The marvelous sowing about 
 the Sea of Galilee is reaching its 
 ripening. The leaven is leaven- 
 ing the whole lump. The mus- 
 tard-seed reappears in hundreds 
 
 ures of relief. From Applcton's Cyclo- 
 pedia Annual for 1901.
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 and hundreds of millions of seed. 
 Cuba is helped to freedom for its 
 own sake; the Russian Czar he 
 at least in Eussia in sincerity 
 says: "War should end." In 
 business it is ceasing to be a 
 maxim that the benefit of the one 
 is ever opposed to the benefit of 
 the many. We are learning that 
 the Golden Eule and the law of 
 self - preservation run parallel. 
 Applied to commercialism, the 
 Golden Rule is so to make money 
 as to give a benefit also to him 
 from whom you make it ; and that, 
 too, is common sense. The chil- 
 dren of the inner kingdom never 
 crowd : the more, the more room. 
 In all these things we see just 
 the beginnings of the results of 
 His coming : all men of one fam- 
 ily, God the Father, and Christ 
 the eldest Brother ; the sacredness 
 of truth, of the soul, of all life; 
 the reality of the inner world. 
 100
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 Man has climbed up in count- 
 less ages by the slow processes of 
 evolution to where he can use the 
 powers of nature through his brain 
 becoming a coworker with God 
 in guiding the processes of evolu- 
 tion. Now, being reborn into the 
 inner kingdom, he starts on a 
 new and infinitely higher destiny. 
 Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, 
 the things that are laid up for 
 those thus born. 
 
 With a boundless universe with- 
 in and without, and an infinite 
 God, and with an eternity to live 
 and work in, many, many things 
 can take place, and it is God's 
 good pleasure that they shall nev- 
 er take place to our hurt. The 
 creature of the kingdom of the 
 spiritual man is injury-proof. 
 
 And the command is : " Be ye 
 
 perfect as your Father is perfect " j 
 
 ever approaching Him in countless 
 
 ages and reaching Him at the end 
 
 101
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 of eternity, had eternity an end} 
 but since it has no end, in what- 
 ever distant period and however 
 great the distance between us, God 
 is still the Infinite one and we the 
 finite ones. 
 
 Ah, how men err ! The Eoman 
 Emperor, after his awful massacre 
 of Christians, set up a column in 
 memory of the extinction of the 
 last Christian. But the Roman 
 empire is in dust, and now the 
 world is rapidly becoming wholly 
 Christian ; and were that emperor 
 alive, he, quite likely, would ap- 
 plaud the result. God's step- 
 pings are from star to star. Who 
 knoweth His counsel? 
 
 From the pen of Garrison shot 
 the thunderbolts of heaven. For 
 a time, at no spot on earth did 
 the wrath of God so blaze and 
 flash as in the eye of Wendell 
 Phillips. But we must study to 
 103
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 judge God aright inunfol ding his- 
 tory. We ever misread his works. 
 We see in the storm-cloud a 
 messenger of His fury, and in the 
 lightning flash His consuming an- 
 ger; but, instead, that cloud is 
 big with mercy and breaks in 
 blessings, and its lightning proves 
 to be but one of God's ways for 
 burning poison out of the air and 
 creating life-giving forces. Time 
 is God's interpreter. The chil- 
 dren of the Southern slaveholders 
 now see that Phillips and Garri- 
 son and Beecher were God's mes- 
 sengers of love. 
 
 We look back all along the con- 
 flict of the ages of evolution; we 
 now see, in the changing of the 
 dunghill into shrubs and roses and 
 into food, the prophecy of all, and 
 we marvel at our blindness in not 
 knowing that the most manifest 
 thing in all the world, and at all 
 times, was God the Father work-
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 ing for good, whom again and 
 again we have compelled to cry 
 out in pain (for God can suffer 
 pain) : " The reproaches of men 
 have broken My heart. " Looking 
 backward, we begin to see the 
 good in everything, that there has 
 not been a fall of a sparrow with- 
 out accompanying provision for 
 the sparrow, and we grow enthu- 
 siastic and shout with the martyr 
 of old : " Glory be to God for ev- 
 erything that happens ! " Hand- 
 in-hand we walk with the great 
 Father over the ages of history, 
 riding victorious over mountain- 
 tops. 
 
 We see, modifying the words of 
 John Fiske, that in the roaring 
 loom of time, out of the endless 
 web of events, strand by strand, 
 was woven more and more clearly 
 the living garment of God. 
 
 When Christ had passed beyond 
 104
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 the grave He said "Mary," and 
 Mary said " Master " ; they spake, 
 they understood, tho death and 
 the grave intervened. The world 
 of the physical senses has no 
 barrier that hinders knowing 
 in the kingdom of the spiritual 
 man. 
 
 The kingdom of the psychic 
 nature of man the kingdom of 
 light, love, conscience, true spiri- 
 tuality, of the clear recognition of 
 Christ and of the Fatherhood of 
 God and the brotherhood of man 
 the next step in evolution, the 
 present step is at hand. Now we 
 see through a glass darkly, then 
 we shall see face to face ; now we 
 know in part, but then we shall 
 know even as we are known. 
 Christ's hand is on the latch of 
 the world's door. Gladstone 
 spoke but sober truth when he 
 said: "At this moment Christ is 
 105
 
 NEXT STEP IN EVOLUTION 
 
 undeniably the prime and central 
 power of the world." 
 
 " The Wandering Jew " is near 
 the end of his wanderings. 
 
 As reasoned the Apostle : * If 
 the Gentiles were cut out of the 
 olive-tree which is wild by nature, 
 and were grafted contrary to na- 
 ture into a good olive-tree, how 
 much more shall the Jews, which 
 be the natural branches, be grafted 
 into their own olive-tree? For 
 God is able to graft them in again. 
 For I would not, brethren, that 
 you should be ignorant of this mys- 
 tery, lest ye should be wise in 
 your own conceits : that blindness 
 in part has happened to Israel, 
 until the fulness of the Gentiles be 
 come in. AND SO ALL IS- 
 EAEL SHALL BE SAVED. 
 
 *Rom. xi. 
 106
 
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 Whence came the order and perfection 
 of the universe, instinct in animals, in- 
 telligence and conscience in man ? How 
 can we account for the Bible and Jesus 
 Christ, and is there a life beyond ? 
 
 Lutheran Observer, Philadelphia: 
 ' The merit of the volume is in the fact 
 that it presents in clear, simple,compact 
 form the great arguments for a theistic 
 and distinctively Christian view of na- 
 ture and man. It is fitted to do fine ser- 
 vice." 
 
 i6mo, Cloth. Price, 60 Cents, Net 
 By Mail, 65 Cents 
 
 FUNK & WAGNALLS 
 COMPANY, Publishers 
 30 Lafayette Place, NEW YORK
 
 COMMENDED BY LEADERS IN 
 
 Jesus the Jew 
 
 BY HARRIS WEINSTOCK 
 
 Introduction by 
 Prof. David Starr Jordan 
 
 Ten frank talks pointing out the need 
 and the way for mutual understanding 
 and tolerance betw'n Christian and Jew 
 
 GENUINE PRAISE 
 
 NON-JEWISH 
 
 R. Heber Newton, D.D., New York: 
 "Its catholicity of thought and spirits, 
 its wisdom and charity, go straight to my 
 heart. A sign of the times truly is your 
 noble book ; a prophecy of the time to 
 come." 
 
 Prof. Francis Peabody, Harvard 
 University : "It is marked by rare candor, 
 justice and sympathy. It is likely to con- 
 quer many prejudices and encourage mu- 
 tual understanding.' 
 
 Rev. James M. Ludlow, Author of 
 " Deborah" : " Your views are broad and 
 noble, and commend themselves to every 
 generous man, Jew or Christian." 
 JEWISH 
 
 Rabbi C. A. Rubenstein, Baltimore : 
 'It cannot but relieve the strain wherever 
 it exists in the religious and social rela- 
 tions between the Jew and the Christian." 
 
 Rabbi Isaac L. Rypins, St. Paul : "I 
 am now circulating the book among my 
 Christian friends." 
 i zmo, Cloth, $1.00 net. By mall $1.10 
 
 FUNK & WAGNALLS 
 COMPANY, Publishers 
 30 Lafayette Place, NEW YORK
 
 A 000 036 597 3