tian has a motive sufficient to reconcile him to the endurance of every possible contingency of evil. He can live for truth and for GOD: for GOD is truth; and earthly truth is the means of communion with GOD. This inherent motive is an internal demonstration of the truth of Christianity. If Christianity, possessing as it does a motive such as this, be not true, then no religion is true, for we are as happy in the ignorance of GOD as we could be in the knowledge of Him. Other religions possess truth in so far as they possess this motive. It is the intermixture of error which hampers this motive in its universal operation, and destroys in every false religion the internal self-sufficiency which ensures happiness.

When the various nations of mankind endeavoured to make religion suit what seemed their immediate requirements, instead of yielding themselves up in faith to the impulse of primitive tradition, they lost the power by which they might have passed triumphantly over the wave of some momentary crisis, and found themselves caught in the imprisoning boundaries of earth-born idolatry. The present took the place of the eternal, the local took the place of the universal. The powers of nature which could be felt, drove out of mind the power of the GOD of nature Whose agents they were, and Who Himself should have been worshipped as the great object of faith. "Professing themselves to be wise, men became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible GoD into an image made like to corruptible man and to birds and fourfooted beasts and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: who changed the truth of GOD into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, Who is blessed for ever." This is the history of all religious error.

Truth which is essentially infinite, the harmony of universal Being, cannot be grasped by finite intelligence, although we, finite creatures, must yield ourselves to its guidance. When we limit the infinite we can but catch a distorted representation of it. The infinite is not separable into parts. When we think to lay hold of one part, we have got but a caricature of the eternal prototype. Hence that which is sublime in Truth becomes grotesque in idolatry.

Two features are characteristic of almost every false religion, namely limitedness of applicability and grotesqueness of imagery. They are the natural result of man's endeavour to subordinate truth to his own mind instead of subordinating himself to the infinitude of revealed truth. We must be very careful not to allow the same process to begin amongst ourselves now that we have a fresh startingpoint in the possession of a more perfectly revealed system of truth. Heresies of modern times accommodate themselves naturally to modern tones of thought, just as ancient heresies took their form from

the grotesque sense of the supernatural which mingled itself with oriental philosophy, but we are not to think that because they form themselves after a mould borrowed from our own philosophy, therefore they are consistent with the eternal laws of the Infinite. Quite otherwise. A religion which presents no contradictions and no difficulties to a finite mind cannot be a means of communion between the finite and created being and the infinite Creator. While therefore we may recognize an indubitable proof of the Divine origin of Christianity in its admirable capacity for leading all mankind to happiness, if they will but embrace its motives and obey its laws; we must not go on to measure its details in accordance with our own preconceived notions, or to criticise its operation by our own standard of what ought to happen. The historical review of systems alien to Christianity should therefore be a warning to modern experimentalizers in religion.

A period of much mental activity inclines men to the investigation of the principles of all action. It is well that we should be able to speak of our religious motives with as much intelligence as would characterize our pursuit of physical philosophy, but this lesson of self-mistrust which the events of the past should force upon us, is one which must lead us not to desire to speak more authoritatively by our own instincts in spiritual inquiries than we can in material ones. In the examination of nature we can only take facts and combine them and argue from them. We cannot make facts other than they are, nor escape from any crux in natural philosophy by obliterating contrariant phænomena from the register of our observations. If some authentic statement is at variance with a law which we should otherwise have unhesitatingly asserted, we are forced to pause, and the patience of a philosophic spirit is continually rewarded by discovering after mature inquiry that what seemed destructive of a necessary principle of nature resulted really from some beautiful provision limiting and regulating what had been previously supposed incapable of such control, and changing into a law of manifold beneficence what would otherwise have wrought the destruction of the fabric of the universe. In the spiritual world we are more free to exercise our arbitrary judgments if we will. The possibility of speculation in its concerns knows no control but that of our moral sense. Material necessity no longer binds us down. But freedom is not authority. We have no more right to let reason dogmatize in spiritual matters than in physical inquiries. Reason must bow in the one case to the experience of the senses. In the other case she must bow no less submissively to the teaching of faith. We must reason from revealed facts in the spiritual world, as we reason from experimental discoveries in nature, but we cannot elude the facts of God's Providence in the one any more than the other. We are indeed, as S. Paul says, "free from righteousness" in a world of sin. We do not

feel the fetters of the higher world to which we belong. We are free to act upon what hypothesis we please, but our only wisdom is to give up that freedom. Faith does not force assent from us in the same way that sensation does, but the laws of the unseen world are as independent of our instincts as are the laws which bind down our bodily movements. It is of the highest consequence that philosophic minds should realize the obligation of philosophic humility in the statements of religion as in those of science. Unfortunately the tendency is not to do so. We are apt to think our instinctive consciousness should make us certain respecting the nature of God, though we never should think of appealing to such guidance, in order to ascertain the nature, and disposition, and requirements of any animal which God has created. How can our instincts inform us of the one more than of the other? How can we predict the constitution of the spiritual world any more than that of the material world? We are tempted to forget our position midway between two worlds. We feel ourselves by our spiritual capacities the lords of creation, and yet we find ourselves puzzled and perplexed by many riddles in the world beneath our feet. We are unwilling too often to allow the existence of the like perplexities in the world above us. We are disinclined in fact to think that there is a world above us. Instead of acknowledging ourselves dependent upon the eternal world, incapable of originative action, created in the image of GOD, we would fain be as gods, knowing by the intuitions of independent reason what is good and what is evil, solving the mysteries of creation by our own originative philosophy, not waiting as passive spectators to receive by revelation from GoD such measure of truth as may be fitting for us.

Mr. Hardwick touches upon the class of minds most prone to this evil, in speaking of the religious tendencies of our age. We could wish that he had entered more fully into their peculiar temptations, so as to exhibit more fully the good which they might effect and the evil to which they are too readily drawn aside.

"In their " he says, eyes, "the evidence of Christianity, the single ground on which it ever must depend is the inherent fitness of its central doctrines to appease their moral and emotional wants. But this position, where exclusively asserted, has involved them in the maintenance of others less consistent with the 'popular theology.' They contend for the importance, not to say necessity, of discriminating between the form of a religion and its essence; or, in other words, require us to abstract the kernel of the truth from what is merely husk and shell, and so determine what portions of the Holy Scriptures are Divine, and really entitled to the designation Word of GOD.'"-P. 11.

We might as well attempt to forward the work of vegetation by prematurely separating the husk from the kernel, as attempt to for

ward that of religion by separating from it those portions which for the present seem to us least necessary to the great end desired, but which may be quite essential to the wellbeing of the maturity of our spiritual life. Our instincts may lead us to acknowledge the stamp of Divine excellence upon the religion of CHRIST, but our instincts can in no way assure us that such features of that religion as seem most arbitrary may not after all be linked most intimately with its vital functions.

It is important to remember what is the end of religion. It is to restore communion between GoD and man. There is one GOD. There is one manhood. There must be one religion to effect the work of their reconciliation. There is therefore one only Mediator between GOD and man, the Man CHRIST JESUS. The Christian religion professes to meet the common want of all mankind. If we are to win mankind to its influence we ought to see what the spiritual wants of each nation are which it is specially calculated to satisfy.

With such a work before us, our natural method of proceeding would be to search into the various systems of philosophy which have spread themselves in each locality. We shall seldom find that any system has obtained much sway unless it contained a considerable element of truth which gave it substance and power. Aristotle led men's thoughts to the beatific vision as the true happiness of man, though he failed to see the connection between this intellectual endowment, and the glorification of our moral nature, which he felt to be practically the proper instrument of our happiness. Arguing from the genuine data of man's constitution. he arrived at a mysterious result which he could not solve, and he felt also that the implantation of a new nature, the communication of the Divine Nature, the gift of aurapxela, so that we might "have life in ourselves," was needful if we were to enjoy that happiness for which we seem to be made. Of traditional religion he made no use, because the distorted forms in which it came to him were degrading to the hopeful vaticinations of that philosophic truth which he possessed. The philosophy of Greece may therefore help us to realize the yearning of the natural mind after those very results which the Christian Revelation sets before us.

When we turn to Asia, we find the traditional elements of thought asserting their control. As the Greek felt the need of a mediator, though he could not venture to hope that one would be vouchsafed, so the Brahmin asserted that GOD had been frequently incarnate, though he in his turn was unable to assign adequate reasons for his incarnation. The philosophic Indian felt his religion to be valueless, and the interference of supernatural power seemed to be only in sport. There then again sprang up a vast system which seemed to parody by anticipation the moral teaching of Christianity. Buddha taught that we must become nothing ere

we could be happy. He saw that all the contingencies of our phænomenal existence hindered the serenity which must belong to true happiness. And does not his mysterious Nirvana strangely point us onward to that death unto the world, whereby alone we can live unto GOD, which CHRIST enjoins, and to which He leads us? From the want of a sustaining mediatorial power, the philosopher could not anticipate the continuance of individual personal existence when the material conditions of outward life had passed away. He could only conceive of us as being absorbed in the spirit of nature. He knew not that the doctrine of Divine Incarnation which the Brahmin taught was really the correlative of that yearning after annihilation which he felt in his own heart. Aristotle caught a glimpse of our natural fitness to find happiness in communion with GOD. Buddha had taught that we must become nothing in order to participate in the happiness of GOD. The old traditions of India spoke of GOD coming near to them. The religious records of the Semitic race contained the prophecies which should be able to solve the difficulties, though not to clear away the mystery, of our existence. GOD was to become man, in order that man might become one with GOD, and the nature of man was to be glorified, his individuality retained, although he was to die to the outer world, receiving by grace a life that was hidden in the Most High.

We shall find that every religious system contains some point of contact with truth. Our wisdom is to search this out. The more we do inquire into the religious aspirations of mankind, the more we shall find that they imply a community of nature and unity of origin. One fact indeed we shall find, viz., that the religious element of thought has become more or more degraded, or else is practically neglected altogether. While man has many instincts which warn him of the existence of a Divine Being and a spiritual world, he is yet quite incapable of imagining the nature of that Divine Being. M. Renan in his Histoire Générale des langues Sémitiques, speaks truly, although himself a rationalist, of the impossibility which man finds of rising in religious conception. He says:"Men do not invent Monotheism. India, gifted as she is with so much originality and depth of thought, has not yet attained to it: nor could the vigorous spirit of Greek philosophers recover this truth for mankind. The Semitic race found it in the imperious instincts of their genius and heart." They had it indeed as an operative principle of life, for "what nation had GoD so nigh unto them as they had in all things which they called upon Him for?" It was not however the infinite expanse of the desert which preached to them Monotheism as this writer suggests. They were retained in the faith contrary to the continually rebellious tendencies of their nature, by the sheltering ordinances of the promise, which from the beginning had marked them out to be