Philosophic Evolution. 207 



gives no sanction, to the altars and shrines of imposture, 

 and He makes His own fiat the substitute for its sorceries. 

 He speaks amid the incantations of Balaam, raises 

 Samuel's spirit in the witch's cavern, prophesies of the 

 Messias by the tongue of the sybil, forces python to 

 recognise His ministers, and baptises by the hand of 

 the misbeliever. He is with the heathen dramatist in his 

 denunciations of injustice and tyranny, and his auguries 

 of Divine vengeance upon crime. Even on the unseemly 

 legends of a popular mythology He casts His shadow, and 

 is dimly discerned in the ode or the epic, as in troubled 

 water or in fantastic dreams. All that is good, all that is 

 true, all that is beautiful, all that is beneficent, be it great 

 or small, be it perfect or fragmentary, natural as well as 

 supernatural, moral as well as material, comes from Him" 

 (" Discourses on the Scope and Nature of University 

 Education," pp. 91-97). 



From all the foregoing considerations, minds tolerably 

 free from prejudice can hardly fail to deduce certain 

 practical conclusions. 



I. Worshippers of God are often reproached with seek- 

 ing to influence their Deity to unduly favour them by the 

 use of flattery ; while yet (it is urged) no mere man, if 

 good, would allow himself to be influenced by praises or 

 abject entreaties, or by expressions of reverence and self- 

 abasement, whether by word or gesture. But any one who 

 has gone through the modern controversy as to " the 



