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might lead to false conclusions. He took up a divinity named Agni, and 
endeavoured to find the various forms under which that divinity was expressed 
and discovered. He found a constant reference to fire, and then grouping the 
various descriptions together, he arrived at the conclusion that Agni was the 
God of fire. Now I think this is a dangerous way of reasoning. Suppose 
that 5,000 years hence some person with the same means of reasoning with 
respect to our society, as Mr. Brown has with respect to ancient Persia, should 
get information with respect to ghosts that have been seen in the 19th 
century, and putting all together should ask himself what there was in 
common 1 Mr. Brown has found that by common consent Agni in all respects 
was fire. What would a person considering the question of ghosts 5,000 
years hence find ? He would observe that they were always seen robed in 
white, and probably conclude that the idea of a ghost in the 19th century, by 
common consent, was inseparably connected with white calico. (Laughter.) 
Such a course of reasoning strikes me as rather dangerous, and I would 
suggest that Mr. Brown should state what portion of his paper he really 
considers conjecture, and what portion he considers as sound and based upon 
undoubted evidence. I think that there are two elements in the paper we 
have heard to-night, and that the valuable element which I have referred 
to is of no small extent. (Hear, hear.) 
Mr. D. Howard. — I think the subject of the paper well worthy of careful 
consideration, for it involves the whole question of early religions. There is 
a certain school of thought which tells us with all the boldness which modern 
scientists alone can command, especially when they are not quite sure of their 
subject, that man is an improving subject, and that man’s religion in the be- 
ginning was not monotheism. It does seem to me that the more we study the 
early histories of religious thought, the more profoundly we are convinced 
that there is no truth whatever in this conception. I should not venture to 
enter into the question as to how far Zoroaster was responsible for the dualism 
in which his followers indulged ; but still it is most interesting to find that 
at that early age you have a reformer appealing not to progress, but to 
antiquity. He does not appeal to the growing intellect of man, but he appeals 
to antiquity. He looks back to monotheism, not forward ; and I say that 
from this point of view we cannot too carefully consider this ancient record. 
It is still more interesting to find the same monotheistic idea running through 
the religious books even of those he opposed. It is, indeed, true that there 
is a school of thought which goes to those books to find the origin of the Old 
Testament revelation. We may study Plato to see what the lights of the 
Greek mind were, and we may study St. Paul without thinking that St. Paul 
borrowed from Plato, and it seems tome that we may well study the longings 
of the human mind for a purer religion, that purer religion being monotheism ; 
and we shall find that in the past and better ages the religion of our fathers 
was monotheism. Any one coming fresh to the confused thoughts and to 
the muddled ideas of the books we have been considering, will all the more 
value the ideas contained in the book of Job, and it is interesting to find in 
that book those allusions to kissing the hand to the sun, which was the very 
