1884.] 
“ Ultimate Religious Ideas." 
5i5 
conceptions, for between the genesis of mind and its ulti- 
mate (whatever that may be) there is the most perfect 
freedom of will. 
It is mere fancy to talk of polytheistic, monotheistic, and 
atheistical faiths, or, as it is put, Atheism, Pantheism, and 
Theism, in a logical disquisition on mental processes, they 
being but conceptions framed in thought. With the principles 
of the mind as to innate perceptions, influx and inspiration, 
we have not now to do, but which, when phenomenal, are 
considered as distinctive attributes or conditions. From all 
that has gone before it follows that each creed and God, be 
the conceptions what they may, are only phases of thought, 
and are real so long as they are recognized in conscious- 
ness ; being so, man is the architect of his own future : to 
repeat the aphorism of Bishop Clerk, “ Where we leave off 
in this life we begin in the next.” Here is the true common 
ground and meeting point of all creeds, but we have not 
now to discuss their reasonableness or unreasonableness. 
We can arrive at “ an ultimate religious truth of the highest 
possible certainty ” different to that which Mr. Spencer in- 
troduces. “Now every theory asserts two things : firstly, 
there is something to be explained ; secondly , that such and 
such is the explanation.” Hence, however widely different 
speculators may disagree in the solutions they may give of 
the same problem, “yet by implication they agree there is a 
problem to be solved.” “ Here there is an element which 
all creeds have in common. Religions diametrically opposed 
in their overt dogmas are yet perfectly at one in the tacit 
conviction that the existence of the world, with all it con- 
tains and all which surrounds it, is a mystery ever preparing 
for interpretation.” This assumption cannot be considered 
to be an “ ultimate religious truth.” It has alone a basis as 
a phenomenal enquiry. Most creeds, if not all, deny there 
is any mystery to explain, and all dispose of phenomenal 
enquiries by presenting a cosmic theory, either assumed to 
be an inspiration of the founder or adopted as being the in- 
spiration of other gifted men. An acquaintance with the 
history of creeds, and of some philosophies approaching the 
importance of creeds, points to an ethical axiom, however 
differently expressed, common to them all. It is found in 
the Vedas; it was the inculcation of Zoroaster as an article 
of faith. It was propounded by Confutse. It is found in the 
Jewish writings, in those of Plato, and in Egyptian myth- 
ology. It was the inculcation of Jesus, and occupies a place 
in the Kuran, varied in phrase, as follows in a true 
transcript : “ Do unto others as you would they should do 
