us.

Froude. A sense of responsibility to the Power that made

Mill. The essence of Religion is the strong and earnest direction of the emotions and desires towards an ideal object, recognised as of the highest excellence, and as rightly paramount over all selfish objects of desire.

Gruppe. A belief in a State or in a Being which, properly speaking, lies outside the sphere of human striving and attainment, but which can be brought into this sphere in a particular way, namely, by sacrifices, ceremonies, prayers, penances, and selfdenial.

Carlyle. The thing a man does practically believe; the thing a man does practically lay to heart, and know for certain, concerning his vital relations to this mysterious Universe and his duty and destiny therein.

The Author of "Natural Religion." - Religion in its elementary state is what may be described as habitual and permanent admiration.

Dr. Martineau.- Religion is a belief in an everlasting God; that is, a Divine mind and will, ruling the Universe, and holding moral relations with mankind.

The perplexity of our imaginary visitor at finding such a list grow under his hand (and it might be almost indefinitely prolonged) could well be conceived. It would seem almost inevitable that he must sooner or later be driven to conclude that he was dealing with a class of phenomena, the key to which he did not possess.

If we can now conceive such an observer able to look at the whole matter from an outside and quite independent point of view, there is a feature of the subject which might be expected ultimately to impress itself upon his imagination. The one idea which would slowly take possession of his mind would be that underneath all this vast series of phenomena with which he was confronted, he beheld man in some way in conflict with his own reason. The evidence as to this conflict would be unmistakable, and all the phenomena connected with it might be seen to group themselves naturally under one head. It would be perceived that it was these forms of religious belief which had supplied the motive power in an extraordinary struggle which man had apparently carried on throughout his whole career against forces set in motion by his own minda struggle, grim, desperate, and tragic, which would stand out as one of the most pronounced features of his history.

From the point at which science first encountered him emerging from the obscurity of prehistoric times, down into the midst of contemporary affairs, it would be seen that this struggle had never ceased. It had assumed, and was still assuming, various forms, and different symbols at different times represented, more or less imperfectly, the opposing forces. Superstition and Knowledge, the Ecclesiastical and the Civil, Church and State, Dogma and Doubt, Faith and Reason, the Sacred and the Profane, the Spiritual and the Temporal, Religion and Science, Supernaturalism and Rationalism, these are some of the terms which would be found to have expressed, sometimes fully, sometimes only partially, the forces in opposition. Not only would the conflict be perceived to be still amongst us, but its dominant influence would be distinguished beneath all the complex social phenomena of the time, and even behind those new forces unloosed by the social revolution which was filling the period in which the current generation were living.

One of the most remarkable features which the observer could not fail to notice in connection with these religions, would be, that under their influence man

would seem to be possessed of an instinct, the like of which he would not encounter anywhere else. This instinct, under all its forms, would be seen to have one invariable characteristic. Moved by it, man would appear to be always possessed by the desire to set up sanctions for his individual conduct, which would appear to be Super-natural against those which were natural, sanctions which would appear to be ultra-rational against those which were simply rational. Everywhere he would find him clinging with the most extraordinary persistence to ideas and ideals which regulated his life under the influence of these religions, and ruthlessly persecuting all those who endeavoured to convince him that these conceptions were without foundation in fact. At many periods in human history also, he would have to observe that the opinion had been entertained by considerable numbers of persons, that a point had at length been reached, at which it was only a question of time, until human reason finally dispelled the belief in those unseen powers which man held in control over himself. But he would find this anticipation never realised. Dislodged from one position, the human mind, he would observe, had only taken up another of the same kind which it continued once more to hold with the same unreasoning, dogged, and desperate persistence.

Strangest sight of all, the observer, while he would find man in every other department of life continually extolling his reason, regarding it as his highest possession, and triumphantly revelling in the sense of power with which it equipped him, would here se him counting as his bitterest enemies worthy of the severest punishment, and the most persistent persecution, all who suggested to him that he should,

in these matters, walk according to its light. He would find that the whole department of speculative and philosophical thought which represented the highest intellectual work of the race for an immense period, furnished an extraordinary spectacle. It would present the appearance of a territory, along whose frontiers had been waged, without intermission, a war, deadly and desolating as any the imagination could conceive. Even the imperfect descriptions of this conflict from time to time by some of the minds which had taken part on one side in it would be very striking. "I know of no study," says Professor Huxley, "which is so unutterably saddening as that of the evolution of humanity as it is set forth in the annals of history. Out of the darkness of prehistoric ages, man emerges with the marks of his lowly origin strong upon him. He is a brute, only more intelligent than other brutes; a blind prey to impulses, which as often as not lead him to destruction; a victim to endless illusions which make his mental existence a terror and a burthen, and fill his physical life with barren toil and battle. He attains a certain degree of comfort, and develops a more or less workable theory of life in such favourable situations as the plains of Mesopotamia, or of Egypt, and then for thousands and thousands of years, struggles with varying fortunes, attended by infinite wickedness, bloodshed, and misery, to maintain himself at this point against the greed and the ambition of his fellow-men. He makes a point of killing and otherwise persecuting all those who first try to get him to move on; and when he has moved a step farther, foolishly confers post-mortem deification on his victims. He exactly repeats the process with all who want to move a step yet farther." This territory of the in1 "Agnosticism," Nineteenth Century, February 1889.

tellect would, in fact, present all the appearances of a battle-field, stained with the blood of many victims, singed with the flames of martyrdom, and eloquent of every form of terror and punishment that human ingenuity had been able to devise.

And he would notice, as many of those who fought in the ranks did not, the note of failure which resounded through all that region of higher human thought which we call philosophy, the profound air of more or less unconscious melancholy which sat upon many of the more far-seeing champions on the side of human reason, and the at times scarcely concealed sense of hopelessness of any decisive triumph for their cause displayed by some of these champions, even while their followers of less insight were ever and anon hailing all the signs of final victory.

There is not, it is believed, anything which is unreal or exaggerated in this view of one of the chief phases of human evolution. The aim has been to look at the facts just as they might be expected to present themselves to an observer who could thus regard them from the outside, and with a mind quite free from all prepossession. He would be able to perceive the real proportions of this stupendous conflict; he would be able to see that both sides regarded it from merely a partisan standpoint, neither of them possessing any true perception of its nature or dimensions, or of its relationship to the development the race is undergoing. it is profitless for science to approach the examination of religious phenomena from the direction in which it is usually approached by a large class of religious writers, it is also apparently none the less idle and foolish to attempt to dismiss the whole subject as if it merely furnished an exhibition of some perverse and meaningless folly and

If