SPENCER'S ECCLESIASTICAL INSTITUTIONS. 203 



It is obvious here that Mr. Spencer is either 

 playing with words or deluded by words. " That 

 religion has a supernatural origin " might mean 

 that all religions, however debased, are a groping 

 after a supernatural reality, whom Christians 

 worship as the Triune God. And this Mr. Spencer 

 cannot consistently deny, though he would assert 

 that that reality, which we may speak of as neither 

 " He " nor " It," is, and always must be, unknow- 

 able. But by " the supernatural origin of religion " 

 Mr. Spencer seems to mean the existence of "an 

 innate consciousness of Deity." And this he is 

 prepared to deny, in the interest of his hypothesis 

 of "ghost-worship." 



" It is strange," Mr. Spencer remarks, " how 

 impervious to evidence the mind becomes when 

 once prepossessed." Yet so prepossessed is he in 

 favour of his own theory, that he does not take 

 the trouble to find out what " theologians at large " 

 really do say, before he refutes them. This is in 

 keeping with what he has done elsewhere. For 

 instance, in the "Data of Ethics" it occurred to 

 him to discuss "theological ethics," and the chosen 

 representative was a perfectly unknown Quaker, 

 who had committed himself to some more or less 

 immoral statements, which Mr. Spencer saw his 

 way to refuting. In the present case, a theologian 

 is in no way bound to believe that man is by 

 nature a ready-made monotheist, or that he at 



