364 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874- 



plained from its beginnings down to the present time. 

 Its ideas are most valuable, for they are part of the organic 

 development of human thought. They are the inalienable 

 property of the human race, just like the Pyramids or any 

 other great work of men s hands. And there is no more 

 to be said about it, except that these ideas are sure to go 

 on developing in future time as they have done in the past. 



It is plain, I think, that no one can rest satisfied with 

 a view like this unless he has first accepted some form of 

 absolute philosophy, some pantheistic theory according 

 to which everything in human history is the mechanical 

 evolution of a hidden principle working by equally in 

 flexible laws in the moral and physical spheres. What 

 ever is is a more or less pure manifestation of the divine. 

 The fundamental order of things is gradually clarifying 

 itself as it is worked out in history. But the only thing 

 that is real is this progress. The individual human soul 

 is of as little account as a single wave in the sea. It is 

 not therefore necessary that a personal religious reality 

 should present itself to the individual soul. It is only 

 necessary that the soul be swept on in the right course of 

 development by a supreme religious conviction. If we 

 have got the highest religious convictions current in our 

 time, we are, as it were, at the crest of the wave, and that 

 is the highest thing possible to us. 



The prophets occupy this position. A great proportion 

 of their convictions has continued to work on in the 

 subsequent development of thought, and accordingly 

 they are greater men than the heathen seers who con 

 tributed very little religious thought that has lived. 



On this view even the ethical monotheism of the 

 prophets has only a relative value. It is not an absolutely 

 true conception, but only an approximation to the true 

 conception of the unity of the universe which we accept 

 provisionally till a better formula is found. And, of 

 course, the idea of personal converse with God is a pure 

 delusion. The highest religious life means nothing more 



