Oftentimes familiar objects, a rock, or a post, if seen in the dim shades of night, will loom up in gigantic size, and assume a threatening attitude. They shrink into their harmless insignificance when we look at them by daylight.

It has been said that all religion is superstition. But what is superstition? Why should mankind in general have superstition? On what capacity of our nature is superstition grafted? The horse, the elephant, is not known to have a superstition. Even in man we see it is not a healthy product of culture and science. It is a perversion of a faculty that is denied a sound training, and hence shoots out in this baneful growth. Accordingly, superstition is what Burke so justly termed it, the religion of untutored minds; and the proof is found in the fact that true religion has been the greatest exterminator of superstition, while times of spiritual ignorance and epochs of unbelief have always been most fruitful of vagaries and monstrosities.

It has been said, again, that religion is the product of man's timidity. But why should man's fears have gathered themselves so universally to this channel, and run in this direction, if there be not some trend in his nature, some fountain of a predisposition, far up in the primitive facts of his being, from which this current so surely flows? What is that predisposition? Do we not cheat ourselves by a mere paralogism if we say that man's timidity is the cause why he is timid on this

subject of religion? The point is, why do his fears universally take this direction?

It has been said, further, that the priest made religion. But who made the priest? We are looking for that element in our nature of which the priest is the expression, the element which created the priest, and without which the priest could no more exist than could a musician among a people who had no perception of the harmony of sounds.

It has been said, once more, that man's vanity gives birth to religion. Puffed up with some bloated idea of his importance in the universe, man's pride is flattered by fancying himself noticed by superior beings, and his self-esteem suggests to him that he is to live beyond the grave. But are self-esteem and religion cognate and harmonious ideas? Does growth in pride have any tendency to produce increased faith in God? Do not the terms of this question bring to view one of the strongest antagonisms of our nature, an exaggerated egoism annihilating everything but self, while the perfection of religion is seen in the destruction of the roots of vanity and pride?

Now these answers to objections, if not needed to blow away this chaff, may help us to conceive of the true point involved in the inquiry before us, and lead each of us to approach it with his own careful thought. This is the best help which one can give to another, to help him to think for

himself. And especially on this subject of religion, overlaid so much by loose thoughts, and illconsidered words, and traditional misconceptions, of what immense importance it is to take it home for an earnest survey by our own minds.

When now I come to give you the analysis of this subject which best satisfies me, and to state what I believe to be the true foundation of religion in the nature of man, let me first of all say a word about the difficulties which beset this whole inquiry. The question does not relate to a matter of sense, which we can see and touch like the foundation-stones of a house. We are in the region of ideas, that upper region of conviction, faith, hope, which is ours as reasonable beings, and to which it is the chief glory of our nature that we can ascend.

The subject summons us to a judicial exercise of our intellect, conscience, and heart. The answer we may reach is not likely to flash conviction upon us, like the solution of a mathematical problem. It will be enough if it shall seem more and more reasonable and satisfying, the more we reflect upon it in our best hours.

Let me premise one thing more. The analysis I am about to present may not be such as others have stated, nor such as you would state yourself. But of what consequence is this? Examinations leading to varying results do not invalidate the reality of the object examined. Beside the general

anticipation of different conclusions, arising from the diversity of sides on which we approach this great subject, there is the further difficulty of defining some of the most familiar emotions of the heart. We never make sufficient allowance for this.

A man tells us of his new religious feeling, of the wonderful joy that thrills his soul, of the peace passing all understanding that has taken possession of his heart; and because, when we question him closely about the matter, he seems to express himself vaguely, fails to give us any clear ideas, and appears to have none himself, we are apt to conclude that he is bewildered and deluded.

us.

A simple lesson in metaphysics should rebuke

If the religious man should question us about some of our most natural and undoubted feelings, the tables might be turned against us. For example, he hears us speak of the sublimity of the ocean. Suppose he should interrogate us about this feeling of sublimity, and ask us to define it, and tell what it is like, that he may have a correct idea of it, and be able to see whether it be a mere whim, or a real feeling founded in the nature of

man.

Could we answer these questions to his satisfaction? Could he not confound, perplex, and baffle us, just as easily as some play this poor game with the man who feels the emotions of religion?

The truth is, many of our most common and

best authenticated feelings are altogether incapable of definition, and at best we can only describe the objects which awaken them, or the circumstances under which they are felt.

Take for inbeauty? By What are its

stance our love of beauty. What is what faculties do we enjoy it? elements? What is its true theory, and what its foundation in the nature of man?

Who can answer these questions? Who does not know that hardly any two writers have answered them alike? But who does not see that this difficulty of definition, and this diversity of analysis, do not in the least impair our confidence in the reality of the love of beauty, as a veritable and authentic exercise of our nature?

There are some advantages in an attempt to analyze this subject of religion, even if the analysis should be inexact. Besides showing that this manifestation of our nature labors under no more obscurity than belongs to other spheres of our experience, it may help to form the conviction, of unspeakable importance to our soul, that religion is not a mere outside growth, a fungus, a parasite, a tradition, a custom, but has its ever-living root in the nature of man.

If now we inquire for the elements of religion in man's soul, do we not find there these four ideas:

1. The first is the idea of God; the simplest, the most intelligible, yet at the same time the loftiest and sublimest thought that ever entered