216 ESSAYS SCIENTIFIC AND PHILOSOPHICAL. 



body, and a complete loss of the sacerdotal cha- 

 racter. With the transition from dogmatic theism 

 to agnosticism all ideas of propitiation will lapse, 

 but " there will ever be a sphere for those who are 

 able to impress their hearers with a due sense of 

 the mystery in which the origin and meaning of 

 the Universe is shrouded." This, and the insist- 

 ence on duty, and the conduct of life, will form 

 the subject matter of the sermons of the future. 

 In religion, the process of " deanthropomorphiza- 

 tion " a word which Mr. Spencer has borrowed 

 from Mr. Fiske will be complete, and we shall 

 be left with a final consciousness of the Un- 

 knowable : 



" One truth must grow ever clearer, the truth that there is 

 an Inscrutable Existence everywhere manifested, to which 

 man can neither find nor conceive either beginning or end. 

 Amid the mysteries which become more mysterious the 

 more they are thought about, there will remain the one 

 absolute certainty, that he is ever in the presence of an 

 Infinite and Eternal Energy, from which all things proceed." 



And, paradox though it may seem, this is the 

 explanation even of ghost-worship. Mr. Spencer 

 and his bete noire the theologians have something 

 in common after all. For they, too, believe that 

 all the imperfect and grotesque forms of worship 

 even ghost-worship, if there is such a thing owe 

 their reality to, and find their explanation in, the 

 existence of the One Supreme Object of worship. 

 At first it looked as if Mr. Spencer was saying 



