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jective reasonings with some true intuitions as to the great 

 objective reality of the " Infinite and Eternal Energy from 

 which all things proceed " ; the suppositioa that under these 

 growing intuitions of the unseen men invented bloody and 

 unbloody sacrifices and offerings, and a highly-complicated 

 ritual, always connected in the earliest ages of which we know 

 anything with duties to God and men ; the theory that by a 

 survival of the fittest of these intuitional religious rites and 

 opinions men worked out the rites and the moral precepts of 

 the Old Testament and the Christianity of the New, which last 

 is, after all, according to Mr. Herbert Spencer, but a stepping- 

 stone to something better; — all these theories are so difficult 

 of verification, that one feels, even when essaying to follow 

 the footsteps of Mr. Spencer in his most cleverly conceived 

 arguments, how every step needs testing, and how uncertain 

 many seem when tested. It is almost like walking over an 

 Irish bog, where you carefully pick your steps from one 

 verdant tuft to another with some amount of solicitude for 

 your personal safety. The very first step of Mr. Spencer, in 

 his Religion, a Retrospect and a Prospect, is questioned at 

 once by a deaf-mute in Yorkshire, who refuses to be placed in 

 the same category with " brutes," " children," and " lowest 

 savages." Even the alleged intuitions of what are called 

 savages are very difficult of verification. Mr. Spencer's very 

 first sentence does not embrace the whole truth, — ''The 

 religious consciousness " is not " concerned only with the un- 

 seen," but is also concerned with historical facts, such, for 

 instance, as the miracles of Christ and the Mosaic Dis- 

 pensation. 



But I am not here to discuss this celebrated Nineteenth 

 Century article, and only wish at present to observe 

 how much simpler is the theory, if you like so to call it 

 (though we hold it to be no theory), and how much more 

 capable of verification at every step, and on that ground alone 

 more scientific, — the theory of revelation from an infinite and 

 personal energy, whom we call God. Given a personal God 

 of infinite power, justice, and benevolence, we not only may, 

 but must, argue a priori to the possibility, at least, if not the 

 probability, of some revelation of His will to man. Given 

 the historical truth of the Mosaic Dispensation, we have such 

 a revelation. Given certain other historical facts, upon some 

 of which I shall presently touch, we have reason to believe 

 that man received a revelation prior to that of the Mosaic 

 Dispensation. If I may quote words of my own, written 

 elsewhere, with regard especially to Hinduism viewed in con- 



