13 



and they confessedly derive their principles of honour, and 

 their power of right-doing, from their devotion. 



The force of this important series of facts is not invalidated 

 nor weakened by the consideration, that in some of the cases 

 referred to the objects of worship were spurious ; but it is 

 rather strengthened by the fact, that so dominant is the sense 

 of need, and so prevalent the persuasion of the possibility of 

 access to God, on whom we depend, that when all true know- 

 ledge of Him was lost, and only false substitutes for the 

 living God existed which could not help, yet, even then, the 

 practice of worship was continued through successive genera- 

 tions of disappointment, all of whom were ready to ascribe 

 the failure to the imperfection of the worship rather than to 

 the impotence or the indifference of their gods. 



We have no other peculiarity of humanity equally universal, 

 operative, elevating, or permanent. How can we account for 

 it, but as the expression of a universally- felt need of our 

 nature, prompting to acts of reverence, submission, trust, 

 obedience, and love, mingled with appeals for help, and 

 grateful thanks for past blessings ? We recognise the un- 

 easiness of hunger and thirst as a natural provision, securing 

 the proper nourishment for the body. And we have equal 

 reason to look upon this pressing sense of spiritual need, and 

 the aspiration to one Supreme King, as a natural provision for 

 the spiritual life of the soul. 



There plainly can be no insuperable difficulty in the way 

 of intercourse in the highest sides of our nature with its 

 Author, when we find our intellect in constant contact with 

 Him. Many things are at present by our philosophical 

 teachers said to be unthinkable, but far more unthinkable 

 than any philosophical impossibility is the constant sight of 

 operation without an operator. No human mind can think 

 of the one without the other. We not only are able to 

 recognise the operation of the Creator, but we can also learn 

 the modes of His operation ; our only difficulty is in the 

 vastness of His work. We can calculate the actual operative 

 force which the divine volition puts forth in the various 

 members of the solar system, in the attractive force of the 

 different chemical affinities, in the great integrating power 

 of gravitation, in the motion of light, in the capillary attrac- 

 tion energetic in every vegetable tube over the surface of the 

 earth. We have been able to employ the sun to paint our 

 portraits, and the lightning to carry our messages round 

 the world; while our own work can only be done as we 

 direct to our own ends the force already and continually 

 operating. 



