WHY I-AM AN AGNo~
7
they must. Children do not, and cannot, believe exactly as they were taught. They are not exactly like their parents. They differ in temperament, in experience, in capacity, in surroundings. And so there
is a continual,
though
almost
imperceptible
change. There is development, conscious and unconscious growth, and by comparing long periods of time we find that the old has been almost abandoned, almost lost in the new. Men cannot remain stationary. The mind cannot be securely If we do not advance, we go backward. anchored. If we do not develop,’ If we do not grow, we decay. we shrink and shrivel. Like the most of you, I was raised among people They did not reason who knew-who were certain. They had no doubts. They knew or investigate. In their creed there was ,that they had the truth. They had a revelation perhaps. no guess -no They knew the beginning of things. ’ from God. They knew that God commenced to create one Monday morning, four thousand and four years before Christ. They knew that in the eternityback of that morning,
he had done nothing.
They knew that it took him six days to make the earth -all plants, all animals, all life’, and all the globes that wheel in space. They knew exactlv what he
,