102 THE RECONCILIATION. 



Each higher religious creed, rejecting those definite and sim- 

 ple interpretations of ^Nature previously given, has become 

 more religious by doing this. As the quite concrete and con- 

 ceivable agencies alleged as the causes of things, have been 

 replaced by agencies less concrete and conceivable, the ele- 

 ment of mystery has of necessity become more predominant. 

 Through all its successive phases the disappearance of those 

 positive dogmas by which the mystery was made unmysteri- 

 ous, has formed the essential change delineated in religious 

 history. And so Religion has ever been approximating 

 towards that complete recognition of this mystery which is 

 its goal. 



For its essentially valid belief, Religion has constantly 

 done battle. Gross as were the disguises under which it first 

 espoused this belief, and cherishing this belief, though it 

 still is, under disfiguring vestments, it has never ceased to 

 maintain and defend it. It has everywhere established and 

 propagated one or other modification of the doctrine that all 

 things are manifestations of a Power that transcends our 

 knowledge. Though from age to age, Science has continu- 

 ally defeated it wherever they have come in collision, and 

 has obliged it to relinquish one or more of its positions; it 

 has still held the remaining ones with undimnished tenacity. 

 aSo exposure of the logical inconsistency of its conclusions 

 — no proof that each of its particular dogmas was absurd, 

 has been able to weaken its allegiance to that ultimate verity 

 for which it stands. After criticism has abolished all its 

 arguments and reduced it to silence, there has still remained 

 with it the indestructible consciousness of a truth which, 

 however faulty the mode in which it had been expressed, 

 was yet a truth beyond cavil. To this conviction its adher- 

 ence has been substantially sincere. And for the guardian- 

 ship and diffusion of it, Humanity has ever been, and must 

 ever be, its debtor. 



But while from the beginning, Religion has had the all- 

 essential office of preventing men from being wholly ab- 



