265 
and they confessedly derive their principles of honour, and 
their power of right-doing, from their devotion. 
The force of this important series of facts is not invalidated 
nor weakened by the consideration, that in some of the cases 
referred to the objects of worship were spurious ; but it is 
rather strengthened by the fact that, so dominant is the sense 
of need, and so prevalent the persuasion of the possibility of 
access to God, on whom we depend, that when all true know- 
ledge of Him was lost, and only false substitutes for the 
living God existed, which could not help, yet, even then, the 
practice of worship was continued through successive genera- 
tions of disappointment, all of whom were ready to ascribe 
the failure to the imperfection of the worship rather than to 
the impotence or the indifference of their gods. 
We have no other peculiarity of humanity equally universal, 
operative, elevating, or permanent. How can we account for 
it, but as the expression of a universally-felt need of our 
nature, prompting to acts of reverence, submission, trust, 
obedience, and love, mingled with appeals for help, and 
grateful thanks for past blessings? We recognise the un- 
easiness of hunger and thirst as a natural provision, securing 
the proper nourishment for the body. And we have equal 
reason to look upon this pressing sense of spiritual need, and 
the aspiration to one Supreme King, as a natural provision for 
the spiritual life of the soul. 
There plainly can be no insuperable difficulty in the way 
of intercourse in the highest sides of our nature with its 
Author, when we find our intellect in constant contact with 
Him. Many things are at present by our philosophical 
teachers said to be unthinkable, but far more unthinkable 
than any philosophical impossibility is the constant sight of 
operation without an operator. No human mind can think 
of the one without the other. We not only are able to 
recognise the operation of the Creator, but we can also learn 
the modes of His operation; our only difficulty is in the 
vastness of His work. We can calculate the aetual operative 
force which the divine volition puts forth in the various’ 
members of the solar system, in the attractive force of the 
different chemical affinities, in the great integrating power 
of gravitation, in the motion of light, in the capillary attrac- 
tion energetic in every vegetable tube over the surface of the 
earth. We have been able to employ the sun to paint our 
portraits, and the lightning to carry our messages round 
the world; while our own work can only be done as we 
direct to our own ends the force already and continually 
operating. 
