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2. The distinction thus stated is true, but the statement in- 
vites criticism. The common usage of language hardly justifies 
us in defining religion as a faculty. Nor is this exactly the 
Professor’s meaning, as appears from his remark, that with- 
~ out the faculty he refers to religion would be impossible. 
The faculty in exercise is religion, not the faculty itself. 
But upon what is the faculty exercised ? Man is the subject 
of religion. What is its object? Or has it any object at 
all? I suppose most of us would maintain that there is a 
most decided objective element in religion,—in some religion 
at least,—and that religion in its highest sense is the conscious 
relation of man to God, or the inward life in relation to God 
as its environment. 
3. In this sense, the question of the Hvolution of Religion is 
a psychological question. Has the mind of man such powers 
or faculties as to enable it to work out the idea of God, and 
the idea of its ewn relation to Him, and to formulate rules 
and principles for the regulation of itself in that relation ? 
It is difficult to understand how evolution can be supposed 
to accomplish this, unless we suppose the relation, or the 
consciousness of it, to be a mere delusion; a figment of the 
mind, having no distinct objective element whatever, but 
entirely furnished somehow by the working of the mind) 
itself. The question whether religion has thus arisen by 
mere evolution from natural elements is surely not to be 
settled by simply begging it. Mr. Herbert Spencer thus 
opens his paper on ‘ Religious Prospect and Retrospect” : 
“The developing man has thoughts about existences which 
he regards as usually inaudible, intangible, invisible; and 
yet which he regards as operative upon him. What suggests 
this notion of agencies transcending perception? How do 
these ideas concerning the supernatural evolve out of ideas 
concerning the natural ?” 
4. Yes, but do they? That is the first question. And the 
way to investigate this question is surely not to begin with 
a hypothetical man in an undeveloped state, and assume that, 
having started in life without any religious ideas at all, he 
has gradually evolved such, in a way that is drawn from 
the inner consciousness of the investigator, not from facts. 
In this way it might be easy to show that religion is only 
built up of “such stuff as dreams are made of,” and accord- 
ingly that it is certain to dissolve in time, and, “like the 
baseless fabric of a vision, leave not a wrack behind.” But 
even the author of the Dream Theory of religion is fain to leave 
something, very substantial, of “(a wrack behind.” And 
those who have experience of religion bear witness plainly and 
