vealed as Love incarnate and dying for man's redemption. Finally, with the cognitive and the emotional element in every religion are always combined desire and volition, taking effect in various actions. These, naturally, vary according to the mode under which the invisible Power is conceived. Most fundamental is the desire to attain and maintain such a relation to the Power or powers believed in, as shall promote the worshipper's well-being, here and hereafter; and according to the way in which the Power is conceived, will be those determinations of the will by which it is sought to attain a satisfactory relation thereto. Hence there is abundant room in the definition for the most diverse and morally opposite actions, by which religion in different peoples finds expression; whether in the noble devotion to the present and eternal well-being of all men which is the ideal of Christian character; or in the revolting cruelties by which multitudes in other religions have sought to commend themselves to the Power or powers they have worshipped; or, in the absolute asceticism of the ideal Buddhist, who forsakes the world, that he may ever live "alone like a rhinoceros," without ties, without affection to anything that is. Religion, then, according to our definition, is a complex experience consisting in the apprehension by man of the existence of an invisible Power or powers, determining his destiny, together with the feelings, desires, and actions to which this apprehension gives rise. This definition being granted, we are now prepared for the inquiry as to the origin of this experience. And inasmuch as the feelings, desires, and actions, included in the definition, are called forth by the apprehension of the existence of an invisible Power or powers, with which man stands in a necessary relation of dependence, the question as to the origin of religion resolves itself into this: How did man first come to believe in the existence of such a Power or powers, as related thus to himself and to the universe? And this leads us to 1 See "Khaggavisàna Sutta," s. 2, 4, in "Sacred Books of the East," vol. x, part 2, p. 6. examine some of the more noteworthy of those theories which in our day have been propounded, and have been accepted by many as a satisfactory answer to this question. LECTURE II. RELIGION AND NATURAL DESCENT. FETISHISM AND ANIMISM. BEFORE proceeding to the particular discussion of some of the more popular theories by which it is sought in our day to account for the origin and growth of religion, it is desirable. to consider for a little an important postulate which their advocates commonly assume as the basis of their argument. It is usually taken for granted, and often formally asserted by such, that primitive man certainly could not have been superior in intellectual and spiritual capacity to the lowest modern savage races; if, indeed, he was not inferior to the lowest of them. And this postulate itself is rested on another assumption not yet proved, or provable; namely, that man originated in a manner exclusively natural, as the result solely of a long process of development, from one or more pairs of anthropoid apes. If this may now be assumed as ascertained scientific truth, then the above postulate as to the intellectual and spiritual capacity of the first men, appears to be justified; and it becomes highly probable that since the first men could not have been much in advance of their simian parents, religion may have originated in some such way as is supposed in the theories to be hereafter reviewed. This assumption is so fundamental to these naturalistic theories as to the origin and growth of religion, that it appears indispensable, as preliminary to any detailed criticism, to consider somewhat carefully the question whether this may or may not be rightly taken for granted now as scientific truth, and made the basis of an argument leading to so momentous conclusions. In opposition to this naturalistic postulate, we venture to affirm that the origin of man by a mere process of natural descent from an inferior order of the animal kingdom, cannot yet be affirmed as established scientific truth. We |