The Later Evolution of Religion

92:0.1Man pos­sessed a re­li­gion of nat­u­ral ori­gin as a part of his evo­lu­tion­ary ex­pe­ri­ence long be­fore any sys­tem­atic rev­e­la­tions were made on Uran­tia. But this re­li­gion of nat­u­ral ori­gin was, in it­self, the prod­uct of man’s super­an­i­mal en­dow­ments. Evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion arose slowly through­out the mil­len­ni­ums of man­kind’s ex­pe­ri­en­tial ca­reer through the min­istry of the fol­low­ing in­flu­ences op­er­at­ing within, and im­ping­ing upon, sav­age, bar­bar­ian, and civ­i­lized man:

92:0.21. The ad­ju­tant of wor­ship—the ap­pear­ance in an­i­mal con­scious­ness of super­an­i­mal po­ten­tials for re­al­ity per­cep­tion. This might be termed the pri­mor­dial hu­man in­stinct for De­ity.

92:0.32. The ad­ju­tant of wis­dom—the man­i­fes­ta­tion in a wor­ship­ful mind of the ten­dency to di­rect its ado­ra­tion in higher chan­nels of ex­pres­sion and to­ward ever-ex­pand­ing con­cepts of De­ity re­al­ity.

92:0.43. The Holy Spirit—this is the ini­tial super­mind be­stowal, and it un­fail­ingly ap­pears in all bona fide hu­man per­son­al­i­ties. This min­istry to a wor­ship-crav­ing and wis­dom-de­sir­ing mind cre­ates the ca­pac­ity to self-re­al­ize the pos­tu­late of hu­man sur­vival, both in the­o­logic con­cept and as an ac­tual and fac­tual per­son­al­ity ex­pe­ri­ence.

92:0.5The co-or­di­nate func­tion­ing of these three di­vine min­is­tra­tions is quite suf­fi­cient to ini­ti­ate and pros­e­cute the growth of evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion. These in­flu­ences are later aug­mented by Thought Ad­justers, ser­a­phim, and the Spirit of Truth, all of which ac­cel­er­ate the rate of re­li­gious de­vel­op­ment. These agen­cies have long func­tioned on Uran­tia, and they will con­tinue here as long as this planet re­mains an in­hab­ited sphere. Much of the po­ten­tial of these di­vine agen­cies has never yet had op­por­tu­nity for ex­pres­sion; much will be re­vealed in the ages to come as mor­tal re­li­gion as­cends, level by level, to­ward the su­per­nal heights of mor­ontia value and spirit truth.