of worship are of incessant recurrence. Even the members of the same sect arrange themselves, by minuter peculiarities, into still smaller groups: so that it may almost be said there are as many forms of religious development as there are individuals of mankind.

2. The varying religious developments of the human race are of extreme diversity. A large number of them, indeed, it would be easy to gather together into kindred assemblages, and, by some general affinities, to class under comprehensive terms; but, when everything should have been done in this direction which it might be possible to do, it would be found that the groups themselves would be divided from one another by strongly-marked and irreconcileable differences. In no satisfactory sense would it be possible to call the whole, Religion. Idolatry, in its various modes, stands out in broad and palpable opposition to all forms of intellectual theism; while the philosophic theism of both ancient and modern times, more familiarly known as the religion of nature, is at a far and hopeless remove from the remedial system unfolded in the Bible. The differences are essential, both in the primary ideas entertained, and in the results which are practically wrought out in the character and conduct of mankind.

Yet all these are religious developments of human nature; that is, they arise from the excitement of the religious faculty, or of the susceptibility to emotion under the idea of God, which characterises the human being. They spring, then, with all their diversity, from one and the same source. The fact is surely a singular and a striking one. Somewhat of unity, or, at least, of common resemblance, might, in the first instance, with much probability, have been expected, in the developments of a power so simple; and the inquiry cannot be wholly without interest or instruction, By what law is it, or by virtue of what influences, that those who possess in their nature a common sensibility to the idea of Deity, are, in the practical operations of this sensibility, wide as the poles asunder? This, in a word, is the question which we now ask, and which we propose to answer.

In looking for the causes of this diversity, we direct our attention, in the first instance, to the great and exclusive object of religious regard to God himself. Here, however, we find no corresponding variableness, of which the ever-shifting religious developments of the human race may be considered as the counterpart. God is one and unchangeable, the same always, the same to all. The last phrase we have used, however, is in one view liable to modification, and, indeed, requires it. The practical question is not so much what God is in himself, as what he is in our conceptions. He is to us what we think him to be; really this, and no more. Attributes of God which are to us unknown, disbelieved, or unappreciated, are to us as though they did not exist; since it is only through our knowledge and appreciation of them that they can exercise any influence upon us; and, on the contrary, attributes which do not belong to God will, if we think they do, have upon us the effect of realities. Hence, practically speaking, the obvious fact that all mankind have not the same ideas of God lays the foundation for asserting that, in one sense, God is not the same to

all. One and unchangeable in himself, the individuals of mankind more or less widely misunderstand and misconceive him, breaking into fragments, or palpably distorting, his glorious form, as that of the sun is shivered among the ripples of the ocean. Yet it is what men think of God that moves them; and hence it may be said that there are many Gods-that is to say, many objects of religious regard, and sources of religious feeling-almost as many Gods as there are men, since almost every man conceives of the deity after his own fashion. And if many Gods, many modes of religious development, since God is the fundamental notion from which all religious development springs. Such as the being worshipped is, such of necessity is the religion which his worship constitutes; whether the degraded, the ferocious, the impure, the imaginative, the superstitious, or the holy. Here, therefore, is the proximate source of the endless diversity of the religious developments of mankind. Every man walketh in the name of his God.' We cannot rest, however, at the point at which we have thus arrived. It is not enough to say that there is an actual diversity in the conceptions which men form of the Deity, sufficient to account for the varying religious development of the race; it is needful to inquire whence this diversity itself may have arisen. It might seem that the idea of God is one in the conception of which a wide diversity ought not to be expected; so fundamental is it to any adequate development of our nature, and so much of simplicity and unity must be held to characterise the source from which it is derived. Yet the fact is as we have stated it, and we are constrained to proceed on our investigation of the cause.

Two classes of causes, of a widely different nature, may be assigned for this fact, according to the idea entertained of the sources from which the conception of God is derived.

According to some writers, the idea of God is simply an inference of the human mind from the works of nature; and it is ever varying, because the mind of man is ever moving onward in a destined course of enlightenment and improvement. On this supposition, men's conceptions of the Deity have been continually becoming more accurate and just; having commenced with the rudest forms, and with an innocent and infantine playfulness, run through the mazes of ancient mythology, they have, by the efforts of philosophy, become partly disentangled from the workings of imagination and the influences of superstition, and are on their way, by an endless career of improvement,' to something approaching the truth. All ages and all nations are to be regarded as having contributed to this result; which is, indeed, a part of the great drama of mental development.' Such is the system advocated in a recent work of considerable pretension, and of great learning,* which now lies before us.

When,' says Mr. Mackay, the human understanding was first roused to contemplate the problem of its destination, it must have been instantly impressed with a sense of its helplessness and incapacity to furnish from its own

Progress of the Intellect. By Robert William Mackay. London: Chapman.

resources a satisfactory solution. The problem must have been abandoned in despair, if it had not been cleared up by the intervention of Heaven. Those consolatory suggestions of ever-present nature, which convey even to the savage a rough answer to the great difficulty, together with the most necessary elements of religious truth, were hailed, on their first announcement, with an avidity proportioned to the want of them, and deferentially received, and adhered to, as divine intimations. The growth of philosophy was checked by the premature establishment of religions. These had grown out of a kind of imperfect and unconscious philosophy, and, clothed in the poetic language of an early age, had been reduced to a permanent system of dogmas and mythi, calculated for a time to answer and satisfy the doubts and aspirations of mankind. But religion, divorced from philosophy, became obsolete and inefficient.'-Progress of the Intellect, p. 36.

On reading this extract we are sure that our readers must be struck, in common with ourselves, by the wonderful clearness of the knowledge which the writer possesses of the earliest intellectual operations of mankind. He speaks of the moment when man was first roused to contemplate the problem of his destination,' almost as though it were one of his own consciousness, and tells us of the avidity' with which 'the consolatory suggestions of ever-present nature' were received as though he had been a personal witness of the joy. We cannot but recollect, however, that this is a representation for which Mr. Mackay has no authentic foundation. It is one, on the contrary, which is totally at variance with the only document in existence having any pretensions whatever to give us information, and for which he must have drawn exclusively on the powers of his own imagination. It is, in truth, a mere fancy piece, and is as grossly out of keeping with the workings of human nature as now open to observation, as it is contradictory to the testimony of the Bible.

It is, indeed, altogether incredible that the primary position of mankind can have been such as Mr. Mackay has pleased himself with imagining. The human being, according to him, was brought into the world, and left in it, in such manner that an indefinite period might elapse before his understanding should be first roused to contemplate the problem of his destination'; and that, when this all-important excitement did take place, he should find no guidance but from 'ever-present nature.' From the 'rough answer' and the 'consolatory suggestions' of this, his first and only adviser, man was to grope way to clearer and more satisfactory views by the aid exclusively of his own thoughts, that is, of philosophy, whose progress has been from time to time obstructed by the premature establishment of religions, and is only now, after having been for many ages nursed in scepticism," conducting us to a certainty and a faith.'

his

Now, even admitting the certainty and the faith' to which philosophy is alleged to have finally conducted us, (of the value of which, however, we do not believe that much can be said,) we think that the picture thus drawn has no verisimilitude; it is nothing like truth; it is an impossibility. The drama of human development' may, indeed, be designated a tragedy of the most melancholy kind, if it has consumed nearly six thousand years, and consigned much more than a hundred generations of men to their eternal home, before any one has been

able to know for a certainty how to solve the problem of his destination. This surely required to be known by the first man, on the first day of his existence, and to be transmissible from this pure fountain through all generations of his posterity.

Mr. Mackay would have us suppose that religion, as an actual development of human nature, originated from an impulse within the human breast; for this we take to be his meaning, when he speaks of the understanding being first aroused to contemplate the problem of its destination.' This, however, is, we conceive, a total fallacy. The susceptibility to religious excitement is in the human breast, but not, we think, the impulse by which it is to be awakened. Man is capable of emotion from the idea of God, but the idea of God requires to be communicated to him. There is, at least, no proof whatever, nor possibility of proof, that, if it were not communicated, it would ever be possessed. That no man ever did or could seek after it from a spontaneous impulse, is plain, not only from the scriptural statement that, by divine communication, it formed from the first a portion of human knowledge; but from this consideration also, that, in order to be intelligently sought, it must, to some extent, be previously known. There is no reason to believe that the idea of God has, in the experience of any one of our race, been a discovery. Its source is instruction. God first gave it to man, and men give it to one another. It originated in revelation, and it is perpetuated by tradition.

It is not, then, with religion, as it is with the sciences and the arts, in which the progress of the intellect may be truly traced, and the 'drama of human development' played out. These have rude beginnings, and make gradual and laborious advances towards maturity, by a progress of improvement which may with justice be said to be 'endless.' But religious truth has a different origin, and follows a different law. It commences in the clearness and perfection of a divine revelation, which may, indeed, be amplified, but cannot be improved. If it suffers change, it suffers also deterioration. Hence, to borrow the words of a recent writer::

'In the whole history of religion the earliest are always the purest days, and, in its progress, every system of religion has undergone obscuration and decline. Take Christianity-take Catholicism, which still outnumbers all other communions, as its representative. Then compare Catholicism and the New Testament-you see the contrast? It is only too manifest. If you go to Persia or to Hindostan, you observe the same fact. Compare the religion of Isaiah with the religion of Gamaliel. Compare the religion of the patriarchs with the religion of the judges. Still obscuration. Men-such is their depravity, seem incapable of long preserving God's truth in its purity. The light of the sun is overshaded by the clouds of earth. God of old spoke once, yea, twice. Men heard and received the word. Ere long the word lost its purity, and with its purity it lost its power over their hearts.'-British Quarterly Review, 1850, p. 475.

It cannot, then, we think, with any justice, or with any semblance of justice, be maintained, that the ever-varying, and often contradictory notions of men respecting the Deity, are merely the shifting scenes in 'the drama of human development,' the progress of ignorance towards wisdom. A directly opposite view must be taken.

Man was

in the first instance put into possession of the true idea of God, and this by God himself. Our race commenced its history amidst the clear light of heaven, and our inquiry must consequently be after the sources of the darkness and obscuration which have been generated in its progress.

The question we now ask is, How should not the idea of God have retained its primary simplicity and truth? The answer to this question is, that the idea of God is not a portion of mere truth, or an element of science simply, but that it is a truth of moral bearing, and thus of an influence more or less welcome to man's heart. Had it been a matter of science merely, the intellect of man might have retained it unharmed; but as a truth having relation to human passions and conduct, it has become liable to modification from the condition of the breast in which it was lodged. In a word, the depraved heart of man has corrupted the primary idea of God. The light shined in darkness,' and the darkness gave it no welcome, but obscured and polluted it in a thousand ways. Such is, doubtless, the principal origin of the inadequate and degrading conceptions of God, which are so abundant throughout the pagan world. Men 'changed the truth of God into a lie'; and even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge,' they became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like unto corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things.' (Rom. i. 21-23.) And the same cause still operates in the modification of the idea of God, even as it is to be derived from Holy Scripture. We, who have the Bible with its flood of light, and who acknowledge its authority, are far from having practically the same Deity. It is not that there are so many difficulties for the intellect, but there are great difficulties for the heart. The blended holiness and justice, mercy and truth, which are the attributes of God as revealed to us in the Bible, approve themselves to men respectively according to the state of their moral affections, and gain access to the mind in the same proportion. Hence, to a great extent, the multitudinous differences among the professors of Christianity. When we scan, even in a cursory manner, the various and often contrasted schemes of doctrine which pass current under this comprehensive name—from the exclusively paternal system advocated by some, through the equitable moral government maintained by others, to the unlovely sovereignty contended for by a third class-it seems impossible not to conclude that these differences have their roots, not in the declarations of the Bible itself, but in the state of heart with which it is approached. Hence, to a considerable extent, it is true, not only that men's notions of God differ from one another, but that men's notions of God are of their own fabricating. Making due allowance for the diversity of the means of knowledge, it may be said that every man fashions his deity after his own heart; and scarcely more so the idolator, who shapes his god with an axe out of the trunk of a tree, than the theologian, who professedly draws out his scheme of divinity from the Bible.