THE ANNUAL ADDRESS. 



THE DEVELOPMENT OE THE RELIGIOUS 

 FACULTY IN MAN, APART EROM REVELA- 

 TLON By the Et. Eev. Bishop Welldon, D.D. 



THE object of my paper is to show how man was historically 

 prepared, as it seems, for the reception of the spiritual 

 truths committed to his reason, and his conscience by God. For 

 however the nature of revelation may be conceived, it depends 

 not only upon the will of God to reveal Himself to man, but 

 upon man's capacity for accepting what is so revealed. But as 

 this paper necessarily lies somewhat apart from the ordinary 

 lines of Christian Apologetics and indeed of the relation 

 between Christian faith and Scientific Discovery or Theory, I 

 desire to preface it by two or three explanatory remarks. 



1. Whatever be the way in which man came into the w^orld, 

 whether by an immediate act of the Creator or by evolution 

 from a lower species, it is evident that there must have been 

 a first man, in other words, there was at some point of the 

 world's history a being who first deserved the name of man. 

 It is perhaps a difhculty in the way of the modern doctrine of 

 man's descent from some lower animal that the beings immedi- 

 ately next to him in the evolutionary scale should be either 

 non-existent or far less numerous than such beings as are 

 infinitely below him. But if there was, as there must have 

 been, a first man, then the nature of man stands by itself ; it is 

 what it has been experimentally proved to be, and it must not 

 be limited by any such standard as may be applicable to the 

 nature of lower beings. 



2. History proves the spiritual element in man. To deny it 

 is wholly to misconceive human nature. It may be admitted 

 that the spiritual part of man's nature, like other parts, has at 

 times become distorted, that is, it has tended to such results 



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