with that Power: prayer, by which the worshipper communes with Him; and an asserted revelation from Him to the creature. In other words-"The religious consciousness regarded as a sense of the presence of the Divine in the universe and among mankind, is found in all stages of human history, and constitutes a primary efficiency in religion, in social life, and in civilization."1 2. There exists, it is affirmed, an abode in which men abide after death. "Looking at the religion of the lower races as a whole, we shall at least not be ill advised in taking as one of its general and principal elements the doctrine of the soul's Future Life."2 3. The reality of evil is an abiding conviction. Evil, as to the body, which no industry, no political arrangement can destroy. Evil, as to the soul, in its weakness and passions. We find it everywhere: it lies in the old Pythagorean doctrine of the metempsychosis. Of Plato it is said "a tolerably complete doctrinal statement might be gathered from his works of the origin, nature, and effects of sin." Polybius would check "the unruly passions and desires of man, by the fear of the invisible and such like tales of horror."4 Cicero says of the sparks of virtue—“They are quickly extinguished by corrupt habit and thought so that the light of nature nowhere appears." In connection with these universal convictions exist holy places, persons, and things; to which are added observances, ceremonies, and rites: the outcome of an undeniable fact that God was prominent in the minds of primitive men, that they perceived a Spirit in everything, mysterious ghostliness in all dark space. No tribe nor people has ever been discovered in the whole course of human history that has not a religion of some kind or other. These religions are not indefinitely variable: the great moral truths are substantially the same. The Aborigines of Australia were said to have no 1 "God in History," vol. iii., p. 302: Bunsen. 2 "Primitive Culture," vol. ii., p. 19: Edward B. Tylor. • Neander's "Church History," vol. i., p. 8. "Tuscu. Quæst.," lib. iii., in proæm. Christianity not an Evolution. 45I idea of the Supreme, no object of worship, "nothing whatever of the character of religion, or of religious observance, to distinguish them from the beasts that perish; "1 yet in the same book are statements and traditions concerning supernatural beings, of the author of mischief in the form of a serpent, of souls, demons, deities. "No religion of mankind lies in utter isolation from the rest, and the thoughts and principles of modern Christianity are attached to intellectual clues which run back through far præ-Christian ages to the very origin of human civilization, perhaps even of human existence."" This last statement is not perfectly accurate as to Christianity, which possesses essential truths of its own. Accept, however, as fact, that the similarity found in ancient faiths is so great that it must arise either from the relics of an ancient revelation, or from universal convictions interwoven with the very life of the soul. There is sufficient resemblance in Theologies to show that, for the most part, they rest upon a common consciousness of the supernatural; sufficient to show a dim confused recollection and tradition of a Divine communication; but not sufficient to enable us to gather out of other faiths our Christian Faith. A committee of inquiry could not collect Christianity from theologies, nor a representative counsel co-ordinate it as the growth of universal consciousness. Christianity is neither a development nor an evolution, it is alike a revelation and realization. "It is the blessed disclosure of that mystery which had been sealed in silence since the foundation of the world. . . . It is a bringing home to every living soul of that which had been the dim and latent hope of the poor suffering heart of humanity in all ages and in all times, but which never became an objective reality until angel voices on the slopes of Bethlehem sang of peace and blessedness to mankind." 3 There is a moral order, a false and a true, a right and a wrong. Indeed, all intelligent intercourse with ourselves, and with the outer world, rests on our faith that the good is true, and the true is good. Not to accept this would conduct a 1 "Queensland:" J. D. Lang. 2" Primitive Culture," vol. i. p. 381: Edward B. Tylor. 3 Bp. of Gloucester and Bristol. "Modern Unbelief,' p. 55. man to insanity, and a race to stupidity: nor even in the stupidity of savagery is the moral element absent though. scanty. Where formal precept fails, there exist traditional consensus and public opinion by which actions are held to be good or bad, right or wrong. Even where religion is separated from morals, as it greatly is in Barbarism, and even in some low forms of professedly Christian faith, the sense of morality is never wholly lost from consciousness and life. On this sense of moral order, of the reality of truth, rests our grand creed that sweeps heaven and earth, that reveals God to us as our Father and Heaven as our Home. We will now transfer the argument from the convictions of men to the advance of art and science. The similarity of early fishing, hunting, and warlike instruments, indicates that they were contrived almost instinctively by a sort of natural necessity; and these rude beginnings have advanced to the improvements of modern skill. Civilization, itself a work of skill, effects a general improvement of mankind; promotes human power and happiness by higher organization of the individual and of society; but the advance of civilization is not, necessarily, a growth of moral order. Some developments of science are positively evil, abounding in debasing arts, and a perfected sensuous godless literature, utterly corrupt. We try to make distinctions, to prove that the street-arab is a specimen of broken-down civilization-who never was civilized; and is, to the Hottentot, as a ruined house to a builder's yard; and we gloss over the hideous depravity and appalling misery of the dangerous classes in our large cities, but all in vain. Civilization does not, of itself, destroy either impurity or superstition. The ancient Etruscans, like the modern Chinese, are examples of skill and delicacy in goldsmith's work and ivory carving; we have not surpassed the Greek in oratory, or in sculpture; nor exceeded Rome in policy and law; but these arts of skill and elegance flourished, and still flourish in connection with abounding cruelty, profligacy, and impurity. So far from religion, or moral order, growing with the growth of civilization, all the great growths of civilization were marred by a separation of secularity from piety; and this divorced purity from manners. The gradual evolution of the high moral spirituality of Christianity by human culture in arts and sciences is disproved by this fact. Nor is that all: when we survey the flights and quaint fancies of primitive tribes, and try to trace them into a higher morality, no example of a forward path is presented. Existing savages have not advanced as men pressing forward to the light, they grope and stumble in darkness. The holiest life ever looked on by the world, and the purest code of morals, are not found amongst the luxurious and refined, but amongst the Jews: a nation not eminent for skill in art, science, or secular culture; nevertheless their great men are the most remarkable that the world has ever seen, and assert the Divinity of Hebrew and Christian Faith. If it be said-Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius were also moral heroes; and may, in some respects be compared with Jewish saints; the answer is, "We admit it; but they furnish the strongest evidence that their virtues were rather by intuition and indestructible consciousness residing in human nature; certainly not the product of civilization, for civilization in the age of the Antonines could not evolve any except a low type of morality." History proves that piety was not invented by savagery and is not established by civilization. Yearning for a better life and for immortality was not created by secular culture; but that this sacred and mysterious aspiration prevailed among primitive men, may be proved by existing myths. Myths do not merely contain a rudimentary cosmic philosophy: an uncivilized race must possess considerable latent philosophy ere a rich mythology can be constructed. Arranging these myths in large assorted groups of ancient imaginative processes, the originating thoughts may be traced in different lands, for they appear with the regularity of mental law. The inner truth is always stronger and stranger than the fictitious surface: and these myths, as proving the well-marked and consistent structure of the human mind in all ages, are the very best history. They reveal ancestral heir-looms of thought; the texture of ancient minds; and while placing on record arts and manners, tell of philosophy and religion in times wholly lost from formal history. The child-like and poetical fancy of early men recognized every natural event as the pictured or representative operation of personal life and will. It was Jove who stretched the rainbow down from heaven, as a purple sign of war and tempest; or, sent it, as Iris, a messenger between gods and men. Analogies, which to us are mere fancies, were realities to the ancients. The Death-goddess, stern, livid, grim; with strong-barred house and nine worlds of departed souls; Hunger-her dish: Famine-her knife; Care-her bed; Misery-her curtain; was a powerful being to the old Norseman. Whatever was seen gave birth to fancies, and fully to understand old-world myths needs not evidence, nor argument, but deep poetic feeling-the faculty of transporting the spirit into the atmosphere and romance of former life. The thoughtful man traces in these myths a consciousness and picture-history of the work of God. Sometimes crude, narrow, repulsive, yet modern poets' fictions, however delicately shaped, want that reality of power whereby archaic forms acted with that immense effect on life and faith which the world has not even yet outgrown. Even if every myth were nought but wild lawlessness of imagination, having no pattern, whether in heaven or earth, what a wonderful land of genius did those early men win and occupy! These births from the imagination of the poet, the tale-teller, the seer, disclose so rich a fancy, such creative power, and mystic mazes of thought, that modern inventive poetic powers are put to the blush. Milton's sin and death sitting within the gates of hell, and their bridge across the deep abyss to earth, powerfully done, are true antiques. The modern fictions of artistic beauty and highly wrought fancies with which civilised man delights himself, possess not the reality nor freshness of the phantasms with which the ancients brightened their imagination and deepened their devotion. We have lost the key of mythic-cypher; but could we translate the complex shifting terms into reality, and read off the meaning in worship, love, adventure, war; their life and beauty would go far to prove that the masterpieces of imagination belong rather to the past than to the present. Unconsciously often, and in despite of themselves, the |