fining its nature ; nay, he finds it necessary to define, that he 
may have an intelligent principle of practice ; and in propor- 
tion to the accuracy of his definition will be the breadth and 
precision of his treatment. And so with religion, or any 
other thing of which we are making investigation. In this 
case, Mr. Muller treats religion as an entity which he has to 
trace to its source, and then come back and look at its later 
developments. How can he find it if he does not know what 
he is looking for ? If he has not the idea or definition in his 
mind, the first question in the investigation is, What is religion ? 
Had this question been plainly answered at the beginning, 
the whole discussion would have resulted in more definite 
conclusions than those at which he has arrived. 
We are unable to proceed in this examination without a 
definition ; and to obtain it we pursue the course recommended 
above. We go to the first man and see what it was in him, 
and we come down the long line of his descendants, and we 
see nothing in the whole survey to prevent us regarding 
religion as the obedient , submissive communion or fellowship of 
man with the Creator , Upholder , and Ruler of the universe. 
This is the religion which the most ancient Yedic hymns 
exhibit, which is shown in the aspirations of all nations, but 
which is imperfect in all cases, in proportion to the obscurity, 
imperfection, or perversion of the idea of the Creator. Some- 
times Mr. Muller has this idea of religion before his mind, 
but more generally he seems to look upon religion as an 
apprehension of the Infinite. Thus, the fourth lecture com- 
mences with this statement of the case : — 
‘ ‘ Let us clearly see the place from which we start, the point which we 
wish to reach, and the road we have to travel. We want to reach the point 
where religious ideas take their first origin, but we decline to avail ourselves 
of tbe beaten tracks of the fetish theory on the left, and of the theory of a 
primordial revelation on the right side, in order to arrive at our goal. We 
want to find a road which, starting from what everybody grants, viz., the 
knowledge supplied by our five senses, leads us straight, though it may be 
slowly, to a belief in what is not, or at least not entirely, supplied us by the 
senses — the various disguises of the infinite, the supernatural, or the 
divine.” * 
Pursuing this course, Mr. Muller proceeds to find evidence 
of the infinite in the objects of sense, thus : — 
“ When we speak of the earth as something complete in itself, like a 
stone or an apple, our senses fail us, or, at least, the senses of the early 
framers of language failed them. They had a name ; but what corresponded 
to that name was not finite or surrounded by a visible horizon, but some- 
thing that extended beyond that horizon.” f 
* Hibbert Lecture, p. 169. 
t P. 177. 
