| Show STUDENT LIFE minds whether women would have an existence in the eternal state Notice how closely their conception of God and the hereafter corresponded to their ideal in man and a state of happiness on earth Let us next consider the Indian He delights in the chase He abhors restraint In the companionship of his dog and gun and in pursuit of the deer or bear he spends his happiest hours The Medicine Man informs us that the Great Spirit finds delights in the chase that he controls the destiny of man and has provided for the red man a happy hunting ground which is all that his simple mind desires In order that he may have his best friends with him there his horse his dog and his gun are buried with him We will now consider the Christian religion Jesus taught the cardinal principles of honesty justice morality and truth These are principles that appeal to man’s reason as being right and they are therefore destined to endure We haye worked out a beautiful system of religion based upon those fundamental laws taught by Christ We have through ages of development added to our list of religious tenets all the laws of spiritual development that we have been able to discover and we worship a God whose attributes are the very qualities we most admire This being true there are probably as many conceptions of Deity as there are theistic persons living People who entertain similar relig- - Ir- O ious ideas group themselves together to promote common interests and thus we have hundreds of sects or denominations all emanating from the same origin all worshiping the same great first cause — God —but with varying beliefs and dogmas yet each justifies his belief by the teachings of the Bible The same is true in nature Two trees stand side by side drawing support from the same soil utilizing the same elements and in the same proportion so far as we can determine but they produce very different fruit “By their fruits ye shall know them but if both bring forth good fruit are they not serving man equally well ? In the same sense if two Church organizations exist side by side and both are influences for good are they not both filling divine missions ? The man who maintains that his own particular order has a monopoly on all that is good and that all others are wholly bad is himself in a deplorable state of mind If men would seek to find out wherein most creeds agree they would probably find that the essential features and fundamental principles of nearly all are practically the same if not identical If they would then try to harmonize the different factions the great series of religions would become convergent Instead of this however divergency is introduced and augmented through the efforts of men to point out the evils of all systems except their own They persist in exalting one and condemning another when in reality ex-erti- - ng |
