RATIONALISTIC CRITICISMS 357 



idea of Christ ; nor to substantiate the Christian's belief 

 in a Personal God of Love. 



Consequently I shall not do more than call attention 

 to the late Mr. Grant Allen's works. He is no doubt 

 right or most probably so in thinking that the primitive 

 idea of a God was an ancestral spirit ; ^ but this does not 

 prove that there is no God in reality. 



His formidable work on The Evolution of the Idea of 

 God has for its object " the proof that in its origin the 

 concept of a God is nothing more than that of a dead 

 man, regarded as a still surviving ghost or spirit, and 

 endowed with increased or supernatural powers and 

 qualities,^ 



That one^ if not the, most primitive idea was ances- 

 tral is obvious. It explains the meaning of sacrificial 

 offerings of roast flesh, vegetables and incense ; but if it 

 be implied that there is no God at all, then I would reply 

 the universal consensus ol opinion, collected by Mr. Grant 

 Alien, though \i per se may be no proof yQt it shows the 

 universal " feeling after God " through all time and space 

 since man has peopled this earth. It has been a groping 

 in the dark, till men gained a clearer light by philosophy 

 and science, apart from anything supposed to have been 

 revealed. 



Having " proved " by inductive evidence the over- 

 whelming probability of the existence of a conscious 

 Mind or God in Nature, then all attempts to discover 

 Him are but progressive efforts and strivings to establish 

 what man has all along been intuitively convinced to 

 have existed, but could not prove, only realising Him in 

 his mind, anthropomorphically, according to his light, in 

 time and space, 



1 So too Col. Gamier in his Worship of the Dead. ^ P. 19. 



