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religious leaders, was not content to repeat the lessons of his 
teachers. In order that the new-found views put forth by 
such men may impress others as they impress themselves, it 
1s necessary in most cases that they should have the sanction 
not merely of hoar antiquity, but of direct revelation. It 
must be observed, however, that the appeal to antiquity 
involves an indirect claim to the support of revelation, 
since it is usually taken for granted that the first fathers 
of the race received from the Creator directions for His 
service. Yet this is seldom felt to be enough. Whether 
the felt intensity of conviction has really arisen from an object- 
ive revelation or not, perhaps the teacher himself is hardly 
able to judge. But, at all events, that intensity itself renders 
it impossible for him to profess to be a mere réproducer of 
tradition. What the Hindus call Smriti, “ the remembered,’ 
the traditional, is always a very secondary authority in religion. 
Sruti, ‘the heard,” that which comes from the divine voice 
itself, can alone be decisive of spiritual truth. At all events, 
in hardly any case do the originators of new religions claim 
to have thought out their ideas for themselves, by their own 
unaided powers. If they did make such a claim, their followers 
would not allow it, and the less so the more enthusiastically 
they adopted the new doctrine. We can hardly understand 
how Sakya Muni, who, to say the least of it, left God out of 
sight, could claim to have arrived at his new light by any 
other process than that of thought. But, to constitute him an 
authority, he was very soon elevated, if he did not elevate 
_ himself, to the position of a “ Buddha,” an incarnation of 
Knowledge itself. 
22. Thus it appears that man does not and cannot believe 
in his own power of religious discovery. Shall we say that 
men are wrong in this, and that all the great and high 
religious thoughts that have ennobled large portions of the 
race have been, after all, the product merely of human intellect ? 
If they were all delusions, they might well be so. But, if 
religious experience demonstrates a powerful and energising 
reality in them, the supposition is absurd. In any case, 
historical evidence of the elevation of religion by the mere 
widening thoughts of men in general is not forthcoming. 
23. Again, the manner in which new ideas in religion are 
generally received is equally instructive. They are rejected 
by the many as new-fangled and therefore false. They are 
accepted by the discerning few because they commend them- 
selves to their religious judgment and instincts. The many 
are stupid and unspiritual; the few have a mind and con- 
science open to higher truths. The many judge only by their 
