Max Müller has touched but lightly, deeming it perhaps Periculosa plenum opus alee; and wisely mindful of the old Greek saying, ἔστι πῦρ ὑπὸ τῇ σποδιῇ. The Philosophy of Religion has its true place at the end and not at the beginning of Comparative Theology; and it is with the latter, that is, with the study of actual forms of faith as determined by Comparative Philology, that Professor Müller is properly concerned. On this theme he is within his right to speak. It cannot, however, be denied that some questions of very deep and momentous interest are stirred in the course of such an inquiry as is necessary to the establishment of a whole theory of Human Religion. To the consideration of some of these we propose to devote our remaining space.

The foremost of these is undoubtedly the question, what is the position of Revelation in a Science of Religion? Is it excluded or made nugatory, or does it in its turn render impossible all scientific study of the evolution of religious truth? Is it limited till it is made of no account; is its probability heightened or lessened by the results of linguistic research into the earliest beliefs of our race? We hasten to reply that we fail to see how its position is in any way seriously affected or disturbed. Revelation is no theory. Its truth or certainty as a fact can only be estimated historically in the same way as other matters of fact. Its antecedent pro

bability will mainly depend on its necessity so far as human faculties can presume to judge of such a point. But the testimony of existing and extinct ethnic religions is altogether in favour of such necessity. For without the aid of Revelation they have all gone out of the way.' It is not that we would depress in favour of the truth of Judaism and of Christianity the value and qualities of primæval natural religion. We hold with the Fathers of Alexandria † that there is good ground for looking

* Revelation is, of course, nullified by being explained, i.e. by its system of truths being analysed into an eclectic compound of Semitic and Iranian beliefs. Its method or career may be explained as following the laws of development noticeable in other book-religions of the world.

† In contradistinction to the African school, e.g. Tertullian, Apol. xlvi. But Clement Alex. speaks rather of the philosophy of the Greeks than of their religion. Thus the Greek mythologies have been held to furnish the conception of the exaltation of manhood to Deity; the Oriental, the glorious humiliation of Godhead. The presence of these Divine ideas in the world has further been explained from the traditions of a primitive revelation rather than as the spontaneous, but gradual, creation of the religious faculty.

If we

on heathenism as a rрoraideia, a seed-plot, and germ of the Truth, however imperfect and stunted; and as bearing its testimony in an unconscious way to the reality of Christian Revelation. Holy Scripture, without doubt, speaks with the same voice. Known unto God are all His works from the "beginning of the world.'* But the Apostle of the Gentiles, who has spoken the most unreservedly of this Evangelical Preparation,' declares also most unequivocally his belief in the degradation of the religious sentiment of mankind, proceeding from voluntary causes. But there is an error of an opposite kind to exaggerated views of human corruption in the matter of religious beliefs, which cannot be left out of account. have faith in the truth of a religion as revealed, it is surely impossible that we should not hold such to be unique, sui generis, divided by a real gulf from all the other religions of the world. These may contain elements, however derived, of moral and even religious truth. They may present indications more or less remarkable, amounting to anticipations of the fact, to what has been called unconscious predictions of matters of subsequent revelation. In some respects therefore they may have formed parts of a general education of the human race. But it is evident that they cannot be held to be homogeneous or of the same character with a religion which under the guidance of a specific revelation has from the first been possessed of truths withheld from the bulk of mankind.

We think that Mr. Max Müller (perhaps from sheer love of his subject) is inclined to regard too favourably the characteristics of purely natural religious systems. With this view he has in his concluding lecture selected from various and widely different religions passages of high moral purity and fervour. But though it may be true that all in some way or in some portions of their teaching inculcate moral truth, this is surely not the whole of the matter. Much less can it be reasonably asserted that in one sense every religion is a true religion, being the only one possible at the time, or compatible with the language, thoughts, and sentiments of each generation appropriate to the age of the world.

Acts x. 35, xiv. 16, xvii. 29; Rom. i. 18. See Davison on 'Primitive Sacrifice,' pp. 104, 124.

The lowest races (e.g. the Australian, the Papuas, &c.) show their degradation in language as in religion. Without adopting De Maistre's theory that savage speech is the wreck of foregone language, it may yet be held that lowness of spiritual culture has dragged down language with it. See Archbishop Trench's eloquent Hulsean Lectures (Lect. viii.).

The intention of religion, as the Professor reminds his readers, is doubtless wherever we meet it, always holy. However 'imperfect, however childish a religion may be, and its conception of God, it always places the human soul in the presence of God.' True; but we do not therefore admit that it always represents the highest ideal of perfection which the human soul, even for the time being, can reach and grasp. Its absurdities, its cruelties, its actual immoralities, are not therefore to be forgotten or condoned. Mr. Max Müller has somewhere said that he regards the religion of India at the present day as a half-fossilised megatherion walking about in the broad daylight of the nineteenth century. We are not now speaking of the excesses of persecution or of religious zeal which, it has been hinted, may be charged upon Christianity itself. We have in view rites and practices, resting on principles implicit or avowed, which carry the sanction and form an integrant part of the religion itself. They are not then abuses, forming what have been called the inevitable excrescences of all religions. It has indeed been often pointed out that in the matter of moral truth there may be a complete divorce of morality from religion. For the religious system may be in itself simply immoral; or, as in the case of Buddhism and Confucianism, while the moral precepts inculcated are of the purest and even highest kind, the religious element is actually annihilated by the theory to which it is subjected.

It may be asked whether, if religion be reduced within the limits of a science, the necessity does not arise of its becoming progressive in its character, subjected to a course of advance and evolution fatal to the notion of a fixed and definite Revelation? But the results afforded by an inductive examination of the religions of mankind tend to prove indeed certain fundamental conceptions which may be taken to constitute the outfit of human ideas on the subject. They prove also the long duration throughout which such ideas in their simplest form continue to hold possession of tribes and nations without advance. Naturalism, however, is but inceptive. They bear testimony accordingly to the need of a fresh point of departure for the mind and soul of man in its relations to its Maker and its Judge. This has been attempted to be supplied by philo

De Maistre and Lamennais may have gone too far in holding that Heathenism testifies to Christianity through its want of a moral and religious sense. Yet they admit that there is in natural religions the truth of an instinct needing to be set straight. Waitz, indeed, is of opinion ('Anthropologie,' vol. i. pp. 325, 465) that no natural religion has been able to develope from itself anything of real advantage to human

sophy and by sacerdotalism, as shown in the systems of Egypt, India, and Greece, introducing in various forms doctrines of transmigration, nihilism, absorption, and the like. While these attempts have failed, the need of Revelation has been confirmed. It is by its own nature exempt from theories of evolution or secular progress. The truth is, as Lord Macaulay long ago pointed out in the pages of this Review, theology, whether natural or revealed, is not to be regarded as a progressive science. By this we do not understand that progress within its own limits is denied to that portion of the sum of human knowledge which is drawn from revealed sources. But only that as without Revelation the fund of man's ideas on the subject-matter of religion is necessarily soon exhausted; so neither can any addition be made by human ingenuity to the stock of revealed information. It is only, as Butler has observed, by a wider acquaintance with the scheme of Scripture as realised in fact and experience, that this becomes possible. He accordingly thinks that the Bible may still contain many truths as yet undiscovered. The progress of natural knowledge must, it is plain, react on our religious ideas; and in this manner it is far from impossible but that the history of natural religion worked out under the method so ably delineated in these lectures may extend our comprehension of the scheme of Revelation itself. We see no reason to doubt that in this manner the Author of Revelation and of Nature has wrought upon one plan, adapting the information of divine things thus supernaturally conveyed to the eras at which it was given, to the fulness of times and the diversity of manners.*

The agreeable task remains of indicating one or two out of many substantial services which we believe Professor Müller to have rendered in this work to the cause of true religion. And, first, he seems to us to have effectually disposed of the false and secondary senses too commonly assigned to the phrase, Natural Religion. It is an appellation which has been long and often brandished as a bugbear to believers in Revelation. But on examination it is found to stand for very different meanings. Thus it has been variously applied, first, to all historical forms of religion, prior to and not resting on the authority of Revelation; secondly, to the common stock of kindred ideas on worship and religious belief remaining after the removal of all that is peculiar in the details of particular

progress. Varro's rationalising division of religions into mythical, civil, and philosophical is well known. Cf. Augustine, Civ. D. IV. v. xxvii. ; Plutarch, Plac. Phil. i. 6, &c.

Gal. iv. 4; Eph. i. 10; Heb. i. 2, ix. 8-10; 1 Pet. i. 20.

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systems; in this sense no religion founded on Revelation can ever be entirely separated from natural religion; a fact sufficiently recognised in the Bible both for Judaism and Christianity. And thirdly, to the residuum of moral truths found in the teaching of individual religions, and more especially in the New Testament, after divesting it of the miraculous and supernatural. Thus, in the words of Professor Müller, "Natural Religion becomes a body of truths implanted in human nature, to be discovered by the eye of reason alone, and independent of any such historical or local influences as 'give to each religion its peculiar character and individual aspect. The existence of a Deity, the nature of His attri'butes, such as omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, eternity, self-existence, spirituality; the goodness also of the Deity, and, connected with it, the admission of a distinction 'between good and evil, between virtue and vice, all this, and, according to some writers, the unity and personality of the Deity, were included in the domain of Natural Theology, a ' title rendered famous in the beginning of our century by the much praised and much abused work of Paley.* (P. 126.) We think that there is much truth in Mr. Max Müller's observation that such a farrago corresponds to what in philology has been termed grammatica generalis, an assumed syntagma of common rules and necessary principles supposed to be selfevident and indispensable, yet which are nowhere found in their completeness, and are continually being deviated from and contravened. There never has been,' says our author, 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 religion was entirely rational, was, in fact, pure and simple Deism.' We may in truth say that such a system would be as unnatural, as unsuited to the wants and framework of man's nature, as any

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* Bacon (Adv. of Learning, Bk. II.) defines 'Natural Theology to be that knowledge or rudiment of knowledge concerning God, which may be obtained by the contemplation of His creatures.' 'No light of 'nature,' he adds, extendeth to declare the will and true worship of 'God.' See also Augm. Sc. lib ix., Works, vol. i. p. 831. Paley's wellworn argument from the watch (which has been traced back to Cicero, Nat. D. II. xxxiv.), may, of course, be applied to the outset of religion. Does a savage infer Deity from design; or does he not instinctively endow the fabric with divinity? The elder Socinus is remarkable for having declined to admit the evidences of natural religion; he resolved the knowledge of a God into Revelation. See Hallam, Lit. E., III. ii. § 39.