22 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The student of history, as he looks back at the great religious move- 

 ments of the world, can discern how each great wave of spiritual feel- 

 ing was preceded, prepared for, and received its direction from, some 

 philosophic current. Aristotle, e. g., did more to determine the spe- 

 cial phase of mediaeval Christendom than any of its popes. These 

 four philosophers, Kant, Hegel, Stuart Mill, and Herbert Spencer, sur- 

 pass in their influence on the religious situation any forty theologians 

 who can be mentioned. Religion at certain epochs, such as that of 

 the Hindoo Upanishads, the Neoplatonism of the second and third 

 centuries, or the mediaeval scholasticism, is but philosophy in priestly 

 robe. 



As religions develop, the work of conscious thought and reasoning 

 becomes greater and greater. It is these that mold the warm and im- 

 pressible wax of pious feeling into such different theologic types. It 

 is these that draw up creeds, and that define doctrines with ever- 

 increasing detail ; that subtilize over the pre-existent state of great 

 prophets, that invent theories of incarnation and transubstantiation, 

 and that multiply dogmatic distinctions and schemes of salvation, until 

 the sects become multitudinous. And, if this may be said to the dis- 

 credit of metaphysic speculation, to its credit, on the other side of 

 the account, we may put the fact that it is only through the influence 

 of the philosophic reason that religion is exalted above dull naturalism 

 or sensuous anthropomorphism. It is impossible, by mere observa- 

 tion and induction, to ascend from the imperfect creation to the per- 

 fect divine. The finite universe may suggest a being of vast power 

 and astonishing wisdom, but it demonstrates no infinitude. All that 

 we draw from nature and the human is of the relative and transient 

 order, and supplies no warrant to us of any absolute and eternal. Rude 

 and uneducated minds are always found investing Deity with physi- 

 cal characteristics and human imperfections. " God is a good man," 

 said Dogberry, and, to the sensuous thought, he is to-day but little 

 more than the magnified image of our own humanity. It is by philo- 

 sophic training alone that we learn to analyze and carry out to their 

 rational conclusions those principles of reason which demand of us to 

 recognize as most characteristic of God's attributes, beyond anything 

 that either nature or the human body presents, those attributes of 

 infinity, perfection, and absolute existence, which constitute true di- 

 vinity. 



5. Similarly the moral condition of a people is a most important 

 variable in its development. Ideas of heaven and hell correspond to 

 the moral elevation of the community. The warlike Maori imagined 

 life after death a constant series of battles, in which the gods are 

 always victorious. The Moslem's paradise excites our disgust by its 

 sensualities ; the Greek's, by its trivialities. It is only where the moral 

 nature is elevated that heaven is ennobled to a place worthy the long- 

 ings of a manly man. 



