of Natural Religion. During the last cen- claim of revelation is set up by the foundtury, philosophers who were opposing the ers, or if not by them, at all events by the spread of scepticism and infidelity, thought later preachers and advocates of most that this kind of natural, or, as it was also religions; and would therefore be declined called, rational religion, might serve as a by all but ourselves as a distinguishing feabreakwater against utter unbelief, but they ture of Christianity and Judaism. We soon found out that a mere philosophical shall see, in fact, that the claims to a resystem, however true, can never take the vealed authority are urged far more strongplace of religious faith. When Diderot ly and elaborately by the believers in the said that all revealed religions were the Veda, than by the apologetical theologians heresies of Natural Religion, he meant by among the Jews and Christians. Even Natural Religion a body of truths implanted Buddha, originally the most thoroughly huin human nature, to be discovered by the man and self-dependent among the foundeye of reason alone, and independent of ers of religion, is by a strange kind of any such historical or local influences as inconsistency represented in later controgive to each religion its peculiar character versial writings, as in possession of revealed and local aspect. The existence of a deity, truth.* He himself could not, like Numa the nature of his attributes, such as Omni- or Zoroaster, or Mohammed,† claim compotence, Omniscience, Omnipresence, Eter- munication with higher spirits; still less nity, Self-existence, Spirituality, the Good- could he, like the poets of the Veda, speak ness also of the Deity, and connected with of divine inspirations and god-given utterit, the admission of a distinction between ances for according to him there was none Good and Evil, between Virtue and Vice, among the spirits greater or wiser than all this, and according to some writers, the himself, and the gods of the Veda had Unity and Personality also of the Deity, become his servants and worshippers. were included in the domain of Natural Buddha himself appeals only to what we Religion. The scientific treatment of this should call the inner light. When he so-called Natural Religion received the delivered for the first time the four fundanames of Natural Theology, a title ren- mental doctrines of his system, he said, dered famous in the beginning of our cen- · Mendicants, for the attainment of these tury by the much praised and much abused previously unknown doctrines, the eye, the work of Paley. Natural Religion corre- knowledge, the wisdom, the clear percepsponds in the science of religion to what tion, the light were developed within me." in the science of language used to be called He was called Sarvagna or omniscient by Grammaire générale, a collection of funda- his earliest pupils; but when in later times, mental rules which are supposed to be selfevident, without which no grammar would be possible, but which, strange to say, never exist in their purity and completeness in any language that is or ever has been spoken by human beings. It is the same with religion. There never has been any real religion, consisting exclusively of the pure and simple tenets of Natural Religion, though there have been certain philosophers who brought themselves to believe that their religion was entirely rational, was, in fact, pure and simple Deism.

If we speak, therefore, of a classification of all historical religions into revealed and natural, what is meant by natural is simply the negation of revealed, and if we tried to carry out the classification practically, we should find the same result as before. We should have on one side Christianity alone, or, according to some theologians, Christianity and Judaism; on the other, all the remaining religions of the world.

This classification, therefore, whatever may be its practical value, is perfectly useless for scientific purposes. A more extended study shows us very soon that the

it was seen that on several points Buddha had but spoken the language of his age, and had shared the errors current among his contemporaries with regard to the shape of the earth and the movement of the heavenly bodies, an important concession was made by Buddhist theologians. They limited the meaning of the word "omniscient," as applied to Buddha, to a knowledge of the principal doctrines of his system, and concerning these, but these only, they declared him to have been infallible. This may seem to be a modern kind of view, but whether modern or ancient, it certainly reflects great credit on the Buddhist theologians. In the Milinda Prasna, however, which is a canonical book, we see that the same idea was already rising in the mind of the great Nagasena. Being asked by King Milinda whether Buddha is omniscient, he replies: "Yes, Great King, the blessed Buddha is omniscient. But Buddha

*History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, by Max Muller, p. 83.

† Sprenger, Mohammed, vol. ii p 426. Gogerly, The Evidences and Doctrines of Christian Religion. Colombo, 1862. Part I.

does not at all times exercise his omnis- | faculties of the mind only which, according cience. By meditation he knows all things; to Paley, are sufficient by themselves for meditating he knows everything he desires calling into life the fundamental tenets of to know." In this reply a distinction is evidently intended between subjects that may be known by sense and reason, and subjects that can be known by meditation only. Within the domain of sense and reason, Nagasena does not claim omniscience or infallibility for Buddha, but he claims for him both omniscience and infallibility in all that is to be perceived by meditation only, or, as we should say, in matters of faith.

And then, after reminding them of all that God has done for them, he concludes by saying:

Now, therefore, fear the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in truth; and pat away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the flood, and in Egypt, and serve ye the Lord.

66

And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites in whose lands ye dwell; but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord."

In order to choose between different gods and different forms of faith, a man must possess the faculty of choosing, the instruments of testing truth and untruth, whether revealed or not; he must know that certain fundamental tenets cannot be absent in any true religion, and that there are doctrines against which his rational or moral conscience revolts as incompatible with truth. In short, there must be the foundation of religion, there must be the solid rock, before it is possible to erect an altar, a temple, or a church; and if we call that foundation natural religion, it is clear that no revealed religion can be thought of which does not rest more or less firmly on natural religion.

of necessity include within themselves the elements of natural religion. Nor do we diminish these difficulties in the classificatory stage of our science, if, in the place of this simple natural religion, we admit with other theologians and philosophers, a universal primeval revelation. This universal primeval revelation is only another name for natural religion, and it rests on no authority but the speculations of philosophers. The same class of philosophers, considering that language was too wonderful an achievement for the human mind, insisted on the necessity of admitting a universal primeval language revealed directly by God to man, or rather to mute beings; while the more thoughtful and the more reverent among the Fathers of the Church and among the founders of modern philosophy pointed out that it was more consonant with the general working of an all-wise and all-powerful Creator, that he should have endowed human nature with germinant faculties of speech, instead of presenting mute beings with grammars and dictionaries ready-made. Is an infant less wonderful than a man? an acorn less wonderful than an oak tree? a cell, if you like, or a protoplasm, including potentially within itself all that it has to become hereafter, less wonderful than all the moving creatures that have life? The same applies in religion. A universal primeval These difficulties have been felt distinctly religion revealed direct by God to man, or by some of our most learned divines, who rather to a crowd of atheists, may, to our have attempted a classification of religions human wisdom, seem the best solution of from their own point of view. New defini- all difficulties; but a higher wisdom speaks tions of natural religion have therefore to us from out the realities of history, and been proposed in order to avoid the overlapping of the two definitions of natural and revealed religion. Natural religion has, for instance, been explained as the religion of nature before revelation, such as may be supposed to have existed among the patriarchs, or to exist still among primitive people who have not yet been enlightened by Christianity or debased by idolatry. According to this view we should have to distinguish not two, but three classes of religion: the primitive or natural, the debased or idolatrous, and the revealed. But, as pointed out before, the first, the so-called primitive or natural religion, exists in the minds of modern philosophers rather than of ancient poets and prophets. History never tells us of any race with whom the simple feeling of reverence for higher powers was not hidden under mythological disguises. Nor would it be possible even thus to separate the three classes of religion by sharp and definite lines of demarcation, because both the debased or idolatrous and the purified or revealed religions would

teaches us, if we will but learn, that "we have all to seek the Lord, if haply we may feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us."

Of the hypothesis of a universal primeval revelation and all its self-created difficulties we shall have to speak again; for the present it must suffice if we have shown that the problem of a scientific classification of religion is not brought nearer to its solution by the additional assumption of another purely hypothetical class of religion.

We have not finished yet. A very important, and for certain purposes, very useful classification has been that into polytheistic, dualistic, and monotheistic religions. If religion rests chiefly on a belief in a Higher Power, then the nature of that Higher Power would seem to supply a very characteristic feature by which to classify the religions of the world. Nor do I deny that for certain purposes such a classification has proved useful; all I maintain is that we should thus have to class together religions heterogeneous in other respects, though

As to atheistic religions, they might seem to be perfectly impossible; and yet the fact cannot be disputed away that the religion of Buddha was from the beginning purely atheistic. The idea of the Godhead, after it had been degraded by endless mythological absurdities which struck and repelled the heart of Buddha, was, for a time at least, entirely expelled from the sanctuary of the human mind; and the highest morality that was ever taught before the rise of Christianity was taught by men with whom the gods had become mere phantoms, and who had no altars, not even an altar to the Unknown God.

agreeing in the number of their deities. Besides, it would certainly be necessary to add two other classes the henotheistic and the atheistic. Henotheistic religions differ from polytheistic because, although they recognize the existence of various deities, or names of deities, they represent each deity as independent of all the rest, as the only deity present in the mind of the worshipper at the time of his worship and prayer. This character is very prominent in the religion of the Vedic poets. Although many gods are invoked in different bymns, sometimes also in the same hymn, yet there is no rule of precedence established among them; and, according to the varying It will be the object of my next lecture aspects of nature, and the various cravings to show that the only scientific and truly of the human heart, it is sometimes Indra, genetic classification of religions is the same the god of the blue sky, sometimes Agni, as the classification of languages, and that, the god of fire, sometimes Varuna, the an- particularly in the early history of the hucient god of the firmament, who are praised man intellect, there exists the most intimate as supreme without any suspicion of rivalry, relationship between language, religion, or any idea of subordination. This pecu- and nationality—a relationship quite indeliar phase of religion, this worship of single pendent of those physical elements, the gods forms probably everywhere the first blood, the skull, or the hair, on which ethstage in the growth of polytheism, and de-nologists have attempted to found their serves therefore a separate name. classification of the human race.

COLUMBUS IN THE CALENDAR. The North | bitter pills, take us home to thyself." And this German Correspondent announces that "the is one produced at a revival meeting: — “0 beatification of CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS, of Lord, stir dese yere sinners up right smart, and which there was some talk a few years ago, don't be as merciful as you generally is." And, seems now about to be carried through in good finally, here is a fragment of Scriptural exposiearnest." We are advised by an ancient sage to tion. The preacher accidentally read a wellcall no man happy before his death. COLUMBUS known verse, "My feet are as hen's feet," inhas been dead 365 years. Should his beatifica- stead of hind's feet." "You will observe, my tion be pronounced now, it will exemplify a cus-breddren," he said, dat a hen in the henroost, tomary pontifical extension of the old philoso- when it falls asleep, it tightens its grip so's not pher's rule to an extreme. Centuries generally to fall off. And dat's how true faith, my bredelapse after the death of a Saint before he is en- dren, holds on to de rock." rolled amongst the beatified at Rome. "Call no man happy until long after his death" appears to be the papal maxim as touching beatification.

To the foregoing announcement is added the suggestion that little difficulty will probably occur in proving the one or two miracles which are de rigueur in all cases of the kind in question. One alone, we should think, will suffice in the case of COLUMBUS; and the discovery of America had the great advantage of being a fact.

From Macrae's Americans at Home.

THE Admiralty has lost a man with a real genius for swindling. A clerk was dismissed in 1861 by the Duke of Somerset for misconduct, without a pension. Finding that pensions were to be commuted, this man applied for the commutat on of his own. The clerks in the Admiralty Pension Office considered his application, calculated the price, and finally, after making every inquiry but one, sent him £2,233, with which he removed to America. The one question they took for granted, as he, knowing official ways, was sure they would, was his right to any pension at all. No clerk had been appointed to check that detail. Spectator.