Progress, as defined in a dictionary, means growth, advancement towards a higher and better state. Progress and true religion are inseparably intertwined; and religion is natural to man. Take away religious hope from mankind, deprive it of its faith in a life of purer joy and a higher sense of love, and you take from it the incentive to right living.
If true religion is the revelation of divine Life to mankind, then the progress of the latter may be said to have begun when the idea of man's relationship to and dependence upon the one unseen power was first grasped; and to have continued as human beliefs were advanced from the worship of natural objects and elements, until it finally culminated in that lofty monotheistic concept of God as Spirit and Truth and Love, expressed in Christianity.
Christianity from the time of its inception has been the greatest transforming influence in human affairs. That it has not advanced civilization more rapidly has been due to beliefs in inherited material propensities, as well as to the contamination of the pure teachings of the gospel in its early days by the materialistic philosophy, mysticism, and superstition of that time. When, later, the new faith took on also the forms of secular organization, with the accompaniments of ecclesiasticism, dogmatism, and formalism, it became weakened and its influence was greatly circumscribed, conditions which, making due allowance for the reformatory effects of the intervening time, have in a greater or less degree prevailed to this very day.
