Excerpt from Papers and Proceedings, Vol. 4: Fourth Annual Meeting, American Sociological Society, Held at New York City, December, 27-31, 1909 But now it follows that the mores are affected all the time by changes in environmental conditions and' societal growth, and by changes in the arts, and they follow these in uences without regard to religious institutions or doctrines, or, at most, compromises are continually made between inherited institu tions and notions on one side and interests on the other. The religion has to follow the mores. In its nature, no religion ever changes. Every religion is absolute and eternal truth. It never contains any provision for its own amendment or evolution. It would stultify itself if it should say: I am temporarily or contingently true, and I shall give way to something truer. I am a working hypothesis only. I am a constitution which may be amended whenever you please. The faith once delivered to the saints must claim to be perfect, and the formula itself means that the faith is changeless. A scientific or developing religion is an absurdity. But then again nothing is absolutely and eternally true. Everything must change. Religion is no exception. Therefore every religion is a resisting inertia which is being overcome by moving forces. Interests are the forces, because they respond, in men, to hunger, love, vanity, and fear, and the actual mores Of a time are the resultant Of the force Of interests and the inertia Of religion. The leaders Of a period enlist on the side either Of the interests or the resistance, and the mass Of men oat on the resultant current Of the mores. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."