THE SABBATH. 9 



was held undoubtingly to be the finger of God. To its 

 such conceptions are impossible. We may by habit use 

 the words, but we attach to them no definite meaning. 

 'As the religious education of the world advances,' 

 says Principal Caird, 'it becomes impossible to attach 

 any literal meaning to those representations of God 

 and his relations to mankind, which ascribe to Him 

 human senses, appetites, passions, and the actions and 

 experiences proper to man's lower and finite nature.' 

 To Principal Caird, nevertheless, this imaging of the 

 Unseen is of inestimable value. It furnishes an objec- 

 tive counterpart to religious emotion, permanent but 

 plastic capable of indefinite change and purification 

 in response to the changing thoughts and aspirations of 

 mankind. 



It is, moreover, solely on this mutable element that 

 Principal Caird fixes his attention in estimating the 

 religious character of individuals, or the point of pro- 

 gress which has at any time been attained by nations 

 or races in the religious history of the world. ' Here,' 

 he says, Hhe fundamental inquiry is as to the objective 

 character of their religious ideas or beliefs. The first 

 question is, not how they feel, but what tlr j y think and 

 believe ; not whether their religion manifests itself in 

 emotions more or less vehement or enthusiastic, but 

 what are the conceptions of God and divine things by 

 which these emotions are called forth?' These con- 

 ceptions 'of God and divine things' were, it is admitted, 

 once ' materialistic and figurative,' and therefore objec- 

 tively untrue. Nor is their purer essence yet distilled ; 

 for the religious education of the world still * advances,' 

 and is, therefore, incomplete. Hence the essentially 

 fHixional character of that objective counterpart to 

 religious emotion to which Principal Caird attaches 

 most importance. He, moreover, assumes that the 



