12 



one, and millions of beings proceed from Thee.' He has 

 made everything, and He alone has not been made. The 



clearest, the simplest, the most precise conception 



The belief in the unity of the Supreme God, and in His 

 attributes as the Creator and Lawgiver of man, whom He 

 has endowed with an immortal soul, these are the primitive 

 notions." 



Dr. Legge, in his Lectures on the Religions of China, shows 

 by a careful analysis of the primitive characters by which the 

 Chinese fathers expressed their theological doctrines, and 

 which he says "puts us en rapport with them fully 5,000 

 years ago," that at that remote period their idea of the 

 Deity was Supreme Ruler, " whose providence embraces 

 all." He then proceeds to say that " T'ien has had much of 

 the force of the name Jahve, as explained by God himself to 

 Moses ; Ti has represented that absolute deity in the relation 

 to men of their lord and governor. Ti was to the Chinese 

 fathers, I believe, exactly what God was to our fathers, when- 

 ever they took the great name on their lips." Zoroaster is 

 supposed to have lived about the time of Abraham, and he 

 taught most distinctly the unity, supremacy, spirituality, 

 benevolence, and righteousness of the Creator and Governor 

 of all. But he only professed to be a reformer, bringing back 

 the people to a primitive faith and practice. 



Professor Th. Ribot, in his Contemporary English Psychology, 

 page 241, says : " The legislations of Buddha, of Solon, of 

 Lycurgus, of Confucius, of Mahomet, were not the pure 

 creations of their brain. Confucius 4 ec ^ ares that he follows 

 the traditions of his ancestors. Mahomet states that he is a 

 restorer. Buddhism is born of an effusion of hearts towards 

 charity, tenderness, and the doctrine of inaction. Solon and 

 Lycurgus gave a body of ancient Ionic and Doric institutions. 

 All these men have told the secret to the world." And that 

 secret, according to Professor Ribot, wa?, that these laws for 

 the regulation of human action were the result of the com- 

 bined testimony of individual consciences ; thus showing 

 that the great legislators drew the material for their laws 

 from the operation of that faculty in man which directly and 

 intuitively recognises our responsibility. 



In mere recent times, we find the Greeks and Romans in 

 all their public acts besought the aid of their gods, and in 

 their calamities and failures saw the divine wrath, and pro- 

 ceeded by the appointed means to turn it aside. In our own 

 time, we see the most civilised and enlightened nations are 

 the most religious, while the most honourable, virtuous, and 

 intelligent men of those nations are proportionately devout, 



