Bad arguments for God — His prescience or His power — recoil 
at last on those who use them ; and we conclude, warning all 
who use such arguments, that Mr. Mill’s notions of “ Nature” 
and Religion here exposed, have their roots in too many religio- 
fatalistic antecedents, for the existence of which ill-taught 
Christian teachers have to answer. 
We now pass on. 
§ 2 . — Utility of Beligion. 
35. It is at first with a feeling of surprise, after discovering the 
entire repudiation of Religion, (even “Natural Religion”), that 
one reads the title of Mr. Mill’s Second Essay, “Utility 
of Religion.” If he had really persuaded himself that Reli- 
gion had no foundation at all in truth , (even as a Essay ,, 
part of “Nature,” or as a suggestion in Nature “utility of 
that there might be something above Nature), he Reh ‘ ?10n * 
could hardly have thought of discussing the “Utility of 
Religion” at all. It may be, however, that the very zeal of his 
search for some rule of Right and Duty led him to say : “ it is 
perfectly conceivable that Religion may be morally useful 
without yet being intellectually sustainable ” (p. 74). He had, as 
we observed, begun his religious inquiries into “ Nature,” having 
nothing else to look to. Traditions he had none, to How hc 
which sacredness or authority of any kind could be comes to dis- 
attached by him. He seemed almost the solitary spe- cuss s ' 
cimen of a man, a “ conscious being ” as he says, who was in a 
position to begin from “ mere Nature,” and ascertain in his own 
way Nature’s teachings. His conclusion, however, was that those 
teachings, as he observed them, morally fail. Yet it appears 
that the idea of Duty, the need of some rule or standard of 
right more than mere positive law, he could not but recognize, 
however indistinctly. De facto Nature, considered as a whole, 
with or without man, could not indeed, as we saw, give him the 
needed perfect law. To an ideal of Nature, as contemplated 
by the higher intellect, his mind narrowed by the philosophy 
of Utility could not rise. He drops the inquiry as to Nature, 
therefore, and asks — how indeed could he help it ? — can the 
“Utility” of Religion, in any form, be so practically or empirically 
established, that a law of practical duty may be found by it, — 
suspending for the time the question of its ascertainable truth ? 
3(j. It is not uninteresting to observe how he propounds this 
strange inquiry. He says, “ We propose to inquire Thequestion 
whether the belief in Religion considered as a mere as stated by 
persuasion , apart trom the question ot its truth, is 
really indispensable [“advantageous ” he should have said] to the 
