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one, and millions of beings proceed from Thee.’ He has 
made everything, and He alone has not been made. The 
clearest, the simplest, the most precise conception. .... 
The belief in the unity of the Supreme God, and in His 
attributes as the Creator and Lawgiver of man, whom He 
has endowed with an immortal soul,—these are the primitive 
notions.” 
Dr. Legge, in his Lectures on the Religions of China, shows 
by a careful analysis of the primitive characters by which the 
Chinese fathers expressed their theological doctrines,—and 
which he says “puts us en rapport with them fully 5,000 
years ago,’—that at that remote period their idea of the 
Deity was Supreme Ruler, ‘ whose providence embraces 
all.” He then proceeds to say that ‘‘ T’ien has had much of 
the force of the name Jahve, as explained by God himself to 
Moses ; Ti has represented that absolute deity in the relation 
to men of their lord and governor. ‘Ti was to the Chinese 
fathers, I believe, exactly what God was to our fathers, when- 
ever they took the great name on their lips.” Zoroaster is 
supposed to have lived about the time of Abraham, and he 
taught most distinctly the unity, supremacy, spirituality, 
benevolence, and righteousness of the Creator and Governor 
of all. But he only professed to be a reformer, bringing back 
the people to a primitive faith and practice. 
Professor Th. Ribot, in his Contemporary English Psychology, 
page 241, says: ‘The legislations of Buddha, of Solon, of 
Lycurgus, of Confucius, of Mahomet, were not the pure 
creations of their brain. Confucius declares that he follows 
the traditions of his ancestors. Mahomet states that he is a 
restorer. Buddhism is born of an effusion of hearts towards 
charity, tenderness, and the doctrine of inaction. Solon and 
Lycurgus gave a body of ancient Ionic and Doric institutions. 
All these men have told the secret to the world.” And that 
secret, according to Professor Ribot, was, that these laws for 
the regulation of human action were the result of the com- 
bined testimony of individual consciences; thus showing 
that the great legislators drew the material for their laws 
from the operation of that faculty in man which directly and 
intuitively recognises our responsibility. 
In more recent times, we find the Greeks and Romans in 
all their public acts besought the aid of their gods, and in 
their calamities and failures saw the divine wrath, and pro- 
ceeded by the appointed means to turn it aside. In our own. 
time, we see the most civilised and enlightened nations are 
the most religious, while the most honourable, virtuous, and 
intelligent men of those nations are proportionately devout, 
