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with the infinite, no less than with the seen and the material.

From one side then religion may be defined to be the active expression of that element in man, or rather perhaps of his whole being more or less concordantly united, by which he strives to realise a harmony in all things: and, from the other side a religion is that view of all things which corresponds under particular circumstances with his nature as constituted to seek after this harmony.

Starting then from the idea of a perfect harmony as the final aim of religion, we see that its immediate purpose is to bind together that which is scattered, as things are, or discordant, and to reunite that which has been disarranged or severed. This being so it is evident that in order to reach to the full breadth of the conception of religion we must go beyond man himself. Not only is there a division and discord in self: there is also a division and discord between self and the world, and between self and GOD. Religion claims to deal with these external discords no less than with the discord within us. Religion must be capable of bringing reconciliation and order to those elements and relations of our being which give rise to the widest and most enduring conflicts. It must take account of the continuity of life by

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The idea of religion

which we are united with the past and with the future. It must take account of the solidarity of life by which at any one time we are united in one real whole. It must take account of the totality of life by which all the parts of creation are united in a mutual, though dimly seen, interdependence. And thus we come at last to a general notion of its office to reconcile, to coordinate, to discipline, to hallow: to reconcile man and GOD, to coordinate man and the world, to discipline the individual, to hallow all life by the recognition of a divine presence and a divine will.

This then is our first point: we require for the satisfaction of wants which belong to our constitution a religious solution of the mysteries by which we are surrounded: a solution which shall bring into a harmonious relation the past, the present, and the future, the seen and the unseen, the conflicting elements of our personal nature. The facts of personal and social life lead us to expect that the end which we are made to seek will not be reached without long and painful efforts, without failures, partial attainments, relapses. They encourage us to believe that nothing will be lost in which the spirit of man has answered however imperfectly to the Spirit of GOD. They move us to read as

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we can the lessons of human experience in the slow unfolding of religious ideas, for the widening and strengthening of our divine convictions.

We turn therefore to the long records of the past to learn how men have solved or rather have tried to solve the problems which, as we have seen, must meet them more or less distinctly in the course of life. The past is in this respect the portraiture of humanity. It shows what man is and what he strives to gain. We could not have determined a priori what form these final questions of being would take, and still less what answers would be rendered to them. Each man is only able to realise a small fragment of the wants, the feelings, the aspirations of the race. But in the accumulated experience of ages we see legibly written the fuller tendencies, the more varied strivings, the manifold failures and victories of our common nature. The religious

character of man no less than his social or his intellectual character is to be sought, not in speculation first, but in the actual observation of the facts of his continuous development.

This consideration alone must be sufficient to impress upon the student of Christian Theology the necessity of striving, as opportunity may be given, to understand the essential ideas of faiths, however strange or even repulsive, in which his

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The history of religion parallel

fellow-men have lived and died. These faiths all shew something of what man is, and of what man has made of man, though GOD be not far from each one. The religious history of the world is the very soul of history; and it speaks to the soul. It speaks perhaps with eloquent pathos through some isolated monument which is the sole record of a race that has passed away, as, for example, through those figures from Easter Island in front of which we pass to the treasures of our British Museum. That epitome of a 'Natural Theology' wrought in stone is a fitting preface to the records of human achievement throughout the ages.

Such a search for the religious characteristics of man in the past history of religion is in many respects parallel to the search for the intellectual characteristics of man in the history of the many languages through which the divided nations have expressed their thoughts. A religion and a language even in their simplest forms are witnesses to necessities of man's constitution, and in some sense they are also prophecies of the fuller satisfaction which the wants out of which they spring will obtain in due time. No one language exhausts man's capacity for defining, combining, subordinating objects of thought, but all languages together give a lively and rich picture of his

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certain and yet gradual advance in innumerable different paths towards the fulness of intellectual development. So too it is with the many faiths and observances which men have spontaneously adopted. These in due measure reveal something of his religious powers and needs.

Each race bears actual historical witness to the reality of some particular phase of religious opinion: of noble endeavour as it may be, or of disastrous delusion, or of sad defeat, or of advancing conquest. And if this be so we shall in a certain degree approximate towards a true conception of the religion which corresponds with man's nature by a review of the religious strivings of the many nations. In their experience lies a witness which cannot be gainsaid.

This relation between the history of languages and the history of religion is more than a simple parallel. Religion and language have points of close connexion. This connexion has sometimes been rated too highly and sometimes misinterpreted but it cannot be overlooked with impunity. Natural groups of religions and natural groups of languages are generally coincident. Nor is it strange that it should be so. The same intellectual peculiarities which fix the formation of a language, will fix also the formation of the re