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been left without any knowledge of the Creator, on whom he 
feels he must depend, and to whom he must appeal for help 
and approval ; or without any knowledge of His will. But the 
possession of such knowledge involves a primary revelation. 
This expectation of an adequate revelation is confirmed and 
strengthened by a consideration of what the law of the 
Creator must be. We cannot think of Him imposing arbi- 
trary laws, out of harmony with the nature of man, or un- 
adapted to the conditions of his earthly existence, but such 
as should develop and improve both to the utmost limit. And 
we may further expect, that much of human duty would be 
learned from the nature itself, so that we should be unable to 
escape entirely from a sense of obligation. But as human 
history shows that just and influential ideas of obligation and 
duty are impossible with degraded views of Deity, and as only 
a remembrance of the presence of the Supreme Ruler is an 
adequate motive for human duty, therefore, unless the Creator 
from the first intended man to be a failure, He must have 
revealed Himself so as to have furnished an adequate motive 
for a true and natural life. And further, as the tendency to 
deterioration is unquestionable, and as there cannot be dete- 
rioration without a proportionate loss of moral perception, so, 
to prevent total and universal degradation, we must suppose 
the Ruler to be able, within the scope of the nature, so to 
reveal Himself as to call back the individual or the nation to 
an acknowledgment of His own authority and to the fulfilment 
of duty. Such have been the nature and design of many 
individual and national corrections recorded in the Bible, and 
we have no difficulty in admitting that there has been similar 
Divine correction and recovery in other nations than those of 
whom we have information in the Old Testament. But all 
this implies, not only a primary, but a continuous revela- 
tion. 
There is one period of such religious revival which is so 
remarkable, that it cannot possibly be passed by in any general 
history of religion. So far as it comes within the line of 
Mr. Muller, he discusses it, and gives as much as we can now 
know both of the Buddha and of Confucius. But not only 
within a few years of 500 n.c. did the Buddha in India, and 
Confucius in China, call men to repentance and righteousness, 
but at the same time Pythagoras was doing the like in Greece, 
and more especially in Sicily ; while Daniel and his three 
friends were employed in a similar work in Babylon and 
Persia. We thus have these remarkable facts. First, in ail 
the great centres of population and authority, we have at one 
time men raised up to effect a religious reformation. Secondly, 
