adds, 66 we are not helped much by supposing that the germs of mind were somehow latent in the primeval nebula." If there were no mind in the first place, how could there be mind in the second place? No one believes in its spontaneous generation from nothing. And yet something like this the Materialist confesses, unless he believes that the Matter of the Universe is the brain of a great Nature-God. But Matter, as such, has no self-hood. It does not say or think "I am," and we can never make it say so. But the great I Am is before it, and above it, before and above primordial cell and primeval fire-mist. And though every simple element, or the so called undecomposable parts of matter be deified, yet in none of their collocations could they account for the geometric gem of crystal, nor for the radiance and fragrance of a flower. But with the theist, God is not simply a mechanician, and that only. "He does not work," says Martineau, " by the pharmacopoeia or the scale of chemical equivalents. To be chief artificer, chief dyer, chief engineer, this is not to be the everlasting God." God loved the worlds into being, and upholds them by love. He loves and works by inspiration. Human souls are the offspring of His Divine Enthusiasm. The Universe has over it, and in it, not chance, not an impersonal and abstract law, which is the Deity of the Materialist and Positivist, but a loving and a "geometrizing" God,- a power that makes for righteousness."

66

It is well enough to talk about "Nature," and the "Laws of Nature," if we mean anything clear and definite, and know what we mean, but the pseudo-scientific use of these terms is a great, thick mist. The laws of nature are simply "phenomenal uniformities," having no coercive or executive power whatever. To say that a rule or a law governs, is simply to put the effect before the cause. We know nothing of government of any kind, save that which has its source in, and derives its authority from, the will of the Governor. We do not believe that man is an automaton. We believe in a moral government over moral beings, who constitute a perpetual moral order. We believe not only in the fact of conscience,

but also in its serious authority and eternal value. And we believe in the government of the universe according to the great principle and processes of evolution. These processes are the manifestations of divine power. Hence we do not find that evolution and theism are incompatible, or mutually destructive. But the materialism which denies the moral and spiritual value and authority, if not the fact of will and conscience, and before which nothing is felt in any high sense to be sacred; the doctrine which asserts that mental phenomena cannot exist apart from material, which says that matter is all, and that mind is but a transient product of matter; the doctrine which declares that "love and faith are but distillations of what exists diluted in mutton-chops and beer, and that the voice of one crying in the wilderness was nothing but an automatic metamorphosis of the locusts and wild honey; which opens a brain and says that devotion is the result of a definite molecular change in this or that convolution of gray pulp"; the doctrine which confounds the phenomena of mind with the mind itself, and then confounds mind with matter, which declares that when phenomena cease the essence perishes, that doctrine, while we would not persecute it, yet with it we cannot agree, nor will we leave it uncontroverted; tor to us it not only seems contrary to the highest reason, but it dereligionizes and derides the soul, it dwarfs and finally nullifies "the mighty hopes which make us men."

ARTICLE XXIII.

Historic Theism.

It can never be of slight interest to trace out the dim way in which the divine sense has grown and shaped itself in the ages and races of men. Worship, of some kind, is a universal phenomenon of humanity. Some thought of the God-mystery is discovered in prehistoric times in family altars, mar

riage ceremonies, sepulchres, mound-building, and rude images. Age after age there has been an earnest search for the great source of light and life. Never was this haunting sense of something beyond and above quite lost. Religion possessed man from the first as a part of his life. No tribe was ever destitute of some sacred belief. Some were once thought to be without worship, but after longer and closer observation, it was found that they had some apprehension of religious realities. There is a faculty in man which develops towards the unseen. It is not worth while to discuss the question whether mankind began with a primeval revelation or not. If they had it and soon forgot it, how much better off were they than if they had never had it? Primeval man could no receive abstract ideas. Science is acquired, not given. Theology is learned, not published. Once the art of computing numerals, and the problems of mathematics, were unknown. So God was unknown. Worship, like music and taste, is progressive, refined by culture. Each generation has an advantage over its predecessors. Man is religious by nature. A capacity for music may exist without a correct theory of it. So a relig ious sense may coexist with a mistaken theism. But without a worshipping instinct, the lowest fetish and idol could not have been.

Theism began in the worship of departed spirits. Go back as far as you can, and you will find that some dead ancestor was the chief god of the tribe or family. Only the relatives could share in this household rite. Outsiders must be formally adopted. No one could have two shrines. The new wife must be ceremoniously initiated to her husband's domestic altar. The Patriarch offered sacrifices at stated seasons before the house-fire. This must be perpetuated unbroken, unsullied, by the son. This object of worship was regarded as a family deity, belonging to, and watching over, the home. It assisted in the daily cares, cooked the food, burnt the sacrifices, and lighted the funeral pyre. It was kept burning at the centre of the dwelling guarded and secluded from the stranger. Ancestor-worship played a conspicuous part in some early religions.

Man soon came to look beyond his family or tribe, and to reflect upon the objects of nature. There was grandeur and power to excite his awe and wonder. Through the slow centuries he groped long and dimly after God. He had an innate presentiment of Deity; it was not an idea only, an intimation, an impression of something besides what was felt, seen, heard. Discerning that distance did not stop with the limits of sight, but that space extended on and on beyond, the idea of the unlimited was forced upon his mind. He began to realize that the senses did not recognize the whole. The feeling of vastness was impressed upon the veriest savage. The horizon enlarges, as man advances, into an endless expanse. Around and above are measureless depths. He does not know what it all means, but suspects a mysterious presence in it all. The abstract concept of God is late, but the hint of it is early. A consciousness arose of what could not be explained. Enclosing him was a line, on the one side of which was the finite, on the other the infinite. The infinite seemed as the complement of the finite. For a long while the idea of God is unintelligible, but is a possible, an inevitable idea.

Positive philosophy denies that we can go beyond sensuous knowledge. Human history and experience prove we can. The soul actually sees, apprehends the invisible; it even lives in contact with it face to face. This fundamental fact the unfolding of our being proclaims. Sense and reason do not account for all the facts before us. A truer philosophy affirms that man's mental conceptions suggest their opposites; the finite, the infinite; the seen, the unseen; time, eternity; events, cause; creation, a God. Man tried to find an internal in the external. He looked behind the vail for the Lord of all. What helps did he have in this search? His shadow was his image without his substance. To the material was linked the im material., like a soul fastened to a body. He had two shadows, one appeared in the light, the other in the dark. By day, an outline of himself followed him, so beset him that he could not escape from it. By night he saw world

pictures in the water. A savage standing before a lookingglass thinks he sees his ghost. As inanimate objects have shadows, the belief comes to prevail that they are possessed as he is. The first conception of spirit was very faint. The god-spirit was slightly different from themselves, not much wiser or more powerful, yet dreaded. This was not unlike table-turnings and rappings. As the mind is enlightened, higher realizations are attained.

The shadow left him at night, then came dreams. To primeval man dreams had great importance. Their phenomena were considered as real as the events that occurred when he was awake. Nightmare was personified evil that seized him in the dark, and vanished with the light. He thought the mind deserted the body in sleep, and visited distant places and countries. While it was lifeless and stationary, the soul travelled about in nocturnal adventures. When he dreamed of departed friends and relatives, he believed that the spirits of the dead had visited him. Jacob dreamed of angels passing to and fro on a ladder reaching from earth to heaven. Thus arose the idea that spirit, if not immortal, did survive the body, live on when it disappeared. Thus was slowly elaborated a concept of something separate from the body, and thus a transition was obtained from the visible to the invisible, from matter to spirit.

Many names have been given to the various phases of theism taken from the objects worshipped. Physiolatry, the awe felt towards natural objects, Zoolatry the homage offered to animals, Sabaism, Astrolatry, worship paid to heavenly bodies, Psycholatry, visions, charms, incantations, witchcraft, &c. There is little advantage in these distinctions. The feeling of worship does not differ as its objects differ. The sun is a nobler object than a tree or a snake, but it does not make the devotion bestowed on it nobler. The worshipper is not raised or lowered by the thing itself, but by the character ascribed to it, we shall make four divisions. Fetichism, Polytheism, Theism, Monotheism. There is no logical or chronological order for these terms. They do not occupy distinct periods