"NATURAL RELIGIONS 609 



ily, and all the pity that they have accumulated and, as it were, capi- 

 talized in institutions, political, social, and ecclesiastical, through count- 

 less generations" (pp. 65, 06). 



The writer thus looks upon natural theology as the " true deduc- 

 tion of the laws that govern the universe," as the " science of the rela- 

 tion of the universe to human ideals," and the following are some of 

 \ the questions that it has to answer : " Is there a reward for virtue '? 

 Is there a condensation for undeserved misery ? Is there a sure retri- 

 bution for crime ? ... In one word, is life worth having, and the Uni- 

 verse a habitable place for one in whom the sense of duty has been 

 awakened?" (p. 61). On the other hand, natural religion is "worship 

 of whatever in the known Universe appears worthy of worship," it "is 

 no mere dull morality, for in the first place it is far wider than any 

 morality, being as wide as modern culture, and in the second place, so 

 far as it is moral and bears fruit in morality, even here it is no mere 

 morality, but an historic religion of humanity" (p. 172). It is "the 

 principle by which alone life is redeemed from secularity and animal- 

 ism." " Thus, instead of saying that the substance of religion is mo- 

 rality, and the effect of it moral goodness, we lay it down that the 

 substance of religion is culture, and the fruit of it the higher life " (p. 

 138). 



The strong point of such a system as this lies in its fully recog- 

 nizing the facts of spiritual development that the review of the past 

 thirty years reveals, viz. : that the religion of the churches is but one 

 among other religions of the present day ; that the work, heretofore 

 done by religion, in raising the general tone of life, is now really being 

 accomplished by the separate influences that are summed up in what 

 we call modern civilization. But along with religion in the old sense 

 went something more. Part of its charm lay in the light it threw on 

 the darkness which encompassed men's lives. "So seems the life of 

 man," said one of the early English converts to Christianity, "as a 

 sparrow's flight through the hall when you are sitting at meat in 

 winter-tide, with the warm fire lighted on the hearth, but the icy rain- 

 storm without. The sparrow flies in at one door, and tarries for a mo- 

 ment in the light and heat of the hearth-fire, and then flying forth 

 from the other vanishes into the wintry dai - kness whence it came. So 

 tarries for a moment the life of man in our sight, but what is before 

 it, what after it, we know not. If this new teaching tells us aught 

 certainly of these, let us follow it." Thus religion acquired part of 

 its hold on the minds of men by ministering to their growing desire 

 for knowledge. But the completion of knowledge only leads to the 

 realization of our own ignorance, and the gospel of science with re- 

 gard to the Unknowable is but the echo of the words of Hooker, that 

 " oitr soundest knowledge is to know that we know him not as indeed 

 he is, neither can know him, and our safest eloquence concerning him 

 is our silence." 



vol. xxii. 39 



