i ; 
ings of slain animals, and, as among the Garos, and. many other tribes 
_ beside those mentioned, by Professor Avery, by pouring the blood upon an 
altar; or why they should invent a priesthood. Men surely do not thus, 
and never did, attempt to propitiate each other. The belief in, and fear 
of, ghosts, the adoration of mysterious powers, and the use of symbolism 
in religion, we can easily understand, because they come under our own ex- 
perience : superstitious dread is nothing strange to us, who perhaps have 
friends who would not on any account sit down thirteen at a table, or 
encourage a marriage on a Friday; but we cannot trace the principle of pro- 
pitiation through the shedding of blood to anything that we can grasp in 
human nature. On the other hand, if the Almighty and All-wise instructed 
the fathers of mankind to sanctify a meal (perhaps every meal) to the 
remembrance of Himself, the Giver of all, and to make the very killing of 
the food-animal (as was certainly done under the Mosaic dispensation) a 
picture of the atonement of Christ, the Life of the world, upon the cross, 
which is the central object of all Divine teaching, we can well understand 
the method of priest and sacrifice, and the sentiment of propitiation ; and 
we can understand their being perpetuated, even amongst the most un- 
civilised and illiterate races. Methods in religion are most likely to be 
permanent. The character of the sentiment expressed is more likely to be 
subject to change. The sentiment of propitiation itself in the abstract in 
connection with sacrifice is one likely to remain; but the sentimentas to the 
object to be propitiated is likely to change. The object is unseen and 
unknown, except by revelation. Man is superstitious by nature ; indeed, 
I suppose it may fairly be taken as an actual ‘‘law of nature” that he 
isso. He is also prone to forget God, as we see in all our experience. We 
are not astonished, therefore, at man worshipping either “ ghosts” or 
“natural objects,’ when we see man in our own day transferring the 
worship of Jehovah to the “ghosts” of “‘ canonized” men and women. But 
can we look upon ghost-dread, or the adoration of the mysterious in 
natural objects, as the origin of the universal (and Prof. Avery’s examples 
help us to believe that it has been universal) method of priest, sacrifice, 
and offerings in religion? It must be admitted that honestly we cannot do 
so; we must find an independent origin for that; an origin independent 
of humanity; an origin which we must attribute, as historically we ought 
to attribute it, to a revelation from God. 
I would venture one further word: is there not a fallacy in taking for 
granted, that, because the men of a race are to-day illiterate, and, it may 
be, descended from the aborigines, or at least very early inhabitants, of a 
country, therefore their present religious rights and beliefs represent those 
of all primeval men, or even of their own ancestors? The state of a thing 
to-day is scarcely a sure indication of what it, or something allied to it, 
was a thousand or two thousand years ago. I refer to the last sentence in 
Prof. Avery’s paper, “still it must not be forgotten that the simple beliefs 
and rites that we have sketched belong to a much earlier stage of religious 
growth” (that is, than Hindooism), There is nothing to show, as we regard | 
