"NATURAL RELIGIONS 611 



We may pass over the first objection to natural religion, viz., that 

 it is not natural, because the argument appears a mere play upon 

 words. Natural religion is called so because it differs from super- 

 natural religion ; because it is the religion that is deducible solely 

 from the course of Nature, from the observance of the laws that gov- 

 ern the world in which we live. But it is also objected that the relig- 

 ion inculcated by civilization without supernaturalism is one that is 

 not binding, one which ice can in our hearts defy. 



But are virtue, truth, and love less realities in life because we have 

 dissociated from them the mythology in which they were originally 

 bodied forth to the primitive mind the clothes which were originally 

 wrapped around them ? Listen to the eloquent words of a recent 

 writer : " We must suffer with Christ whether we believe in Him or not. 

 We must suffer for the sin of others as for our own, and in this suffer- 

 ing we find a healing and purifying power and element. This is what 

 gives to Christianity, in its simplest and most unlettered form, its 

 force and life. Sin and suffering for sin ; a sacrifice, itself mysterious, 

 offered mysteriously to the Divine Nemesis, or Law of Sin dread, 

 undefined, unknown, yet sure and irresistible, with the iron necessity 

 of law. . . . Virtue, truth, love, are not mere names ; they stand for 

 actual qualities which are well known and recognized among men. 

 These qualities are the elements of an ideal life, of that absolute and 

 perfect life of which our highest culture can catch but a glimpse. As 

 Mr. Hobbes has traced the individual man up to the perfect state, or 

 Civitas, let us work still lower, and trace the individual man from small 

 origins to the position he at present fills. We shall find that he has 

 attained any position of vantage he may occupy by following the laws 

 which our instinct and conscience tell us are Divine." * 



Yes ! these laws are divine not because we can see the legislator, 

 not because they were supported in the past by supernaturalism ; but 

 because they rest upon our subjective consciousness, supported by sci- 

 ence, by poetry, and the history of the life of man upon the earth ; 

 because they are vouched for by voices, of the wise in all ages, and 

 because they have become part of ourselves. And we have to obey 

 these laws, not because we fear punishment in another woi-ld, but be- 

 cause the violation of them is followed by remorse and disaster in 

 this ; we have to do right, because it is right, because we can only 

 attain the full perfection of our natures by doing so, because human- 

 ity will have it so. Mr. Mallock pointed out that, while science has 

 reduced the earth to insignificance, has robbed it of its glory as the 

 center of the universe, and man of his boasted eminence as the special 

 pet of the Creator, still an intense self-consciousness has been devel- 

 oped in the modern world. " During the last few generations man 

 has been curiously changing. Much of his old spontaneity of action 

 has gone from him. He has become a creature looking before and 



* " John Inglesant," chapters xxiii, xxxix. 



