4 
ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 
earth.” The large portion of the human race inhabiting China are 
chiefly the followers of the great teacher Confucius, and, as Clodd 
says, “ he, of all men, had reverence for the sacred unknown power 
that underlies all things.” Buddhism, said to have a greater follow¬ 
ing than any other single religion, “ seems mainly to rest on the 
principle that the world, and sensible objects contained in it, are 
manifestations of the Deity.”-— Eng. Cyclo. The P arsis, the com¬ 
paratively few surviving followers of Zoroaster, the founder of 
the ancient religion of Persia, fear a God who is Mazda or Creator 
of All. Brahmanism or Hinduism, which includes one-tenth of 
the human race, comprises not only the worship of that which 
maintains (Yishnu), and that which destroys (Siva), but of Brahma 
the creative power, called also Great Bather, Lord of Creatures, 
Euler of the World. 
“ Mighty Brahma, now I’ll bless thee ! 
’Tis from thee that worlds proceed! 
As my ruler I confess thee, 
Por of all thou takest heed.” 
— Goethe , The Pariah’s Thanks. 
In short, as Max Muller says in the preface to vol. i. of ‘ Chips 
from a German Workshop/ “ An intuition of God, a sense of 
human weakness and dependence, a belief in a Divine government of 
the world ” [the italics are the writer’s], “a distinction between 
good and evil, and a hope of a better life, these are some of the 
radical elements of all religions.” Even the materialist does not 
actually deny the existence of a creator and maintainer of the 
universe; while the so-called atheist, if you will only let him use 
some other word than God, will gladly contemplate those laws 
of nature which even he recognises as altogether superhuman. 
Looking at the subject broadly, therefore, a knowledge of the 
laws of nature regarded as the laws of God is of the deepest 
interest to all human beings who are assured of the existence of 
God, be they Brahmans, Parsis, Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, or 
Christians. And to the comparatively few who hold no such belief 
a knowledge of the laws of nature is of equal interest: nay, one 
would suppose that this knowledge would, by the ordinary process 
of induction, lead these persons, at least tentatively, to hold to the 
existence of some such great outside agency. And here one 
may parenthetically remark that it seems to be unavoidable for 
some minds to place the natural in opposition or competition to the 
supernatural. The natural seems to them to be so satisfying, so 
sufficiently superhuman, that it is their ultima Thule. To the great 
majority of minds, however, it is as impossible to regard the natural 
without by a simple process of inference reaching towards the 
