THE EELATION OF SCIENCE TO CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 109 



standards in religious beliefs, or in philosophy and reason, are 

 the materials used. A bewildering maze of moral customs 

 among savages, in ancient beginnings of great civilisations, and 

 at various stages of subsequent culture, are grouped somewhat 

 after the manner of biological orders and genera. And, just as 

 in biology fossils and living creatures are brought into one tree 

 of life, with evolution as the secret of its history, so here, 

 ancient races and modern, savage and civilized, are characterised 

 and located by what is held to be an observed evolution. 



Looking for the basis of morals, the author examines leading 

 features of religious development. His position here is most 

 important. He takes a long stride beyond the limits of science 

 merely physical, but (and this is the essential point for our 

 present purpose) he still stops short of any field of enquiry 

 above and beyond man. Human institutions, and the ideas 

 which men have as the basis of their institutions, are his study. 

 We are shown " the character of the primitive conception of 

 spirits," we meet the savage who " invents beings who are not 

 mere spirits behind the objects that surround him, but are 

 genuine mythical creations." At every turn gods and spirits are 

 spoken of as being what the worshipper imagines them to be. 

 Here are a few instances. " Often, as we know, the gods retain 

 traces of their lowly origin." ..." They control the great 

 forces of nature and the main functions of life." ..." They 

 have their wives." 



It is of course abundantly manifest that Mr. Hobhouse does 

 not assert such things for our acceptance. It is a perfectly 

 legitimate way of speaking of unreal beings so long as it only 

 occurs where author and readers are agreed about the 

 unreality. But the trouble is that, on the principles of his 

 science, the Author has to go on upon the same lines when he 

 deals with Judaism and Christianity, and he does. He seems to 

 use the same sort of phraseology upon the same basis, as if 

 Jehovah, too, were only what His worshippers imagine Him to 

 be. " Yahveh was the God of Israel just as Chemosh was the 

 god of Moab ; " " He is not wholly without fear of the men that 

 He has made " ; " He is in magic fashion dangerous to His wor- 

 shippers." There are a few pages about Christianity, but even 

 that is discussed as a merely human matter ; Christians teach 

 and practise so-and-so. Only very rarely is anything said about 

 the Founder Himself. His name does not occur in the index. 

 The question of His Being is left entirely out of sight. 



Something like this, it would seem, is what the Science of 

 Morals and of Keligion must be. It is easy to see how much it 



