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skilfully adapted to the notions of Western nature-worshippers. The 
thorough investigation and analysis of such problems is a work to which the 
mere “ light of nature ” is unequal. The monotheism of the Bible, rightly 
understood according to the general sense of the Bible itself, will, I believe, 
be found in perfect harmony with the needs of human reason in the highest 
state of culture. In the absence of anything that can be fairly called a 
reason, we must refuse to surrender this position to those who differ from us. 
We cannot accept as arguments chance conjectures based chiefly on a purely 
arbitrary arrangement of certain facts, and made, apparently, in the interest 
of a foregone conclusion. If the whole question be made to turn upon the 
nature and character of belief in the Deity, then the argument of such writers 
as Sir John Lubbock may be moved entirely round to an opposite point. 
The very denial of the Supernatural and the Divine on the part of some who 
have been brought up and continue to live in the midst of its light, furnishes 
of itself a most cogent proof of the necessity of an original Revelation to man. 
It shows that man, in his natural state, could never arrive at a knowledge of 
truths pertaining to the spiritual order. It is not difficult to imagine a 
votary of natural science, here in London, surrounded with adverse influences 
of various kinds, allowing himself gradually to slide so far down the now 
dangerously steep incline of modern unbelief, as to arrive at last at that point 
where God and nature are regarded as practically identical, and in this state 
of worse than heathen darkness proceeding to construct fanciful hypotheses 
concerning the origin of civilization. Such a phenomenon, indeed, strik- 
ingly illustrates the Christian dogma of the fall of man, but sheds not a ray 
of light on his true origin. One extract given in this paper sufficiently 
indicates the stage at which sceptical speculation has arrived : — 
“ Hitherto it has been usual to classify religions according to the nature of 
the object worshipped ; Fetichism, for instance, being the worship of inani- 
mate objects ; Sabseism that of the heavenly bodies. The true test, however, 
seems to me to be the estimate in which the Deity is held.” 
It is not a little curious to find such statements confidently made as if they 
were so many indisputable facts. Before blindly accepting them, one is at 
liberty to ask, “ When did such a mode of classification become generally 
received among thinking men ?” With whom did it originate ? On what 
principle does it rest ? Let us take this alleged “ true test ” of the compara- 
tive value of religions. If, by an “ estimate ” of the Deity, be meant the 
character of the idea we have of Him, then the Christian religion fairly tried 
by this test, rises so far superior to all other religions, as to evince its own 
original heavenly origin. Its cardinal doctrine, in relation to the present sub- 
ject, is sufficiently explicit. It is this. There is one God who has vouchsafed 
to reveal Himself, from the beginning to His creatures. He is fully revealed 
in the Christian Scriptures in a veritable human form, so that all may know 
and worship Him. This idea, when once fairly grasped, suggests to the un- 
biassed and instructed mind stupendous conceptions of Deity and of Creation. 
For the Christian, the question of the origin of civilization is substantially the 
