THE GHOST OF RELIGION, 447 



things. The object of all religion, in any known variety of religion, 

 has invariably had some quasi-human and sympathetic relation to man 

 and human life. It follows from the very meaning of religion that it 

 could not effect any of its work without such quality or relation. It 

 would be hardly sane to make a religion out of the Equator or the Bi- 

 nomial theorem. Whether it was the religion of the lowest savage, of 

 the Polytheist, or of the Hegelian Theist ; whether the object of the 

 worship were a river, the Moon, the Sky, Apollo, Thor, God, or First 

 Cause, there has always been some chain of sympathy — influence on 

 the one side, and veneration on the other. However rudimentary, there 

 must be a belief in some Power influencing the believer, and whose 

 influence he repays with awe and gratitude and a desire to conform his 

 life thereto. But to make a religion out of the Unknowable is far more 

 extravagant than to make it out of the Equator. We know something 

 of the Equator ; it influences seamen, equatorial peoples, and geogra- 

 phers not a little, and we all hesitate, as was once said, to speak disre- 

 spectfully of the Equator. But would it be blasphemy to speak disre- 

 spectfully of the Unknowable ? Our minds are a blank about it. As 

 to acknowledging the Unknowable, or trusting in it, or feeling its influ- 

 ence over us, or paying gratitude to it, or conforming our lives to it, or 

 looking to it for help — the use of such words about it is unmeaning. 

 We can wonder at it, as the child wonders at the " twinkling star," and 

 that is all. It is a religion only to stare at. 



Religion is not a thing of star-gazing and staring, but of life and 

 action. And the condition of any such effect on our lives and our 

 hearts is some sort of vital quality in that which is the object of the 

 religion. The mountain, sun, or sky which untutored man worships 

 is thought to have some sort of vital quality, some potency of the kind 

 possessed by organic beings. W^hen mountain, sun, and sky cease to 

 have this vital potency, educated man ceases to worship them. Of 

 c(5urse all sorts and conditions of divine spirits are assumed in a pre- 

 eminent degree to have this quality, and hence the tremendous force 

 exerted by all religions of divine spirits. Philosophy and the eutha- 

 nasia of theology have certainly reduced this vital quality to a minimum 

 in our day, and I suppose Dean Hansel's Bampton Lectures touched the 

 low-water mark of vitality as predicated of the Divine Being. Of all 

 modern theologians, the Dean came the nearest to the Evolution nega- 

 tion. But there is a gulf which separates even his all-negative deity 

 from Mr. Spencer's impersonal, unconscious, unthinking, and unthink- 

 able Energy. 



Knowledge is of course wholly within the sphere of the Known. 

 Our moral and social science is, of course, within the sphere of knowl- 

 edge. Moral and social well-being, moral and social education, prog- 

 ress, perfection, naturally rest on moral and social science. Civilization 

 rests on moral and social progress. And happiness can only be secured 

 by both. But if religion has its sphere in the Unknown and Unknow, 



