tion of a miracle. If Comparative Theology has taught us anything, it has taught us that a belief in miracles, so far from being impossible, is almost inevitable, and that it springs everywhere from the same source, a deep veneration felt by men, women, and children for the founders and teachers of their religion. This gives to all miracles a new, it may be, a more profound meaning. It relieves us at once from the never-ending discussions of what is possible, probable, or real, of what is rational, irrational, natural, or supernatural. It gives us true mira, instead of small miracula, it makes us honest towards ourselves, and honest towards the founder of our own religion. It places us in a new and real world where all is miraculous, all is admirable, but where there is no room for small surprises, a world in which no sparrow can fall to the ground without the Father, a world of faith, and not of sight1. If we compare the treatment which miracles received from Hume with the treatment which they now receive from students of Comparative Theology, we see that, after all, the world is moving, nay even the theological world. Few only will now deny that Christians can be Christians without what was called a belief in miracles; nay, few will deny that they are better Christians without, than with that belief. What the students of Comparative Theology take away with one hand, they restore a hundredfold with the other. That in our time a man like Professor Huxley should have had to waste his time on disproving the miracle of the Gergesenes by scientific arguments, will rank hereafter as one of the most curious survivals in the history of theology.

1 See some excellent remarks on this point in the Rev. Charles Gore's Bampton Leclures, p. 130.

When delivering these lectures, I confess that what I feared far more than the taunts of those who, like Henry VIII, call themselves the defenders of the faith, were the suspicions of those who might doubt my perfect fairness and impartiality in defending Christianity by showing how, if only properly understood, it is infinitely superior to all other religions. A good cause and a sacred cause does not gain, it is only damaged, by a dishonest defence, and I do not blame those who object to a Christian Advocate, an office till lately maintained at Cambridge, pleading the cause of Christianity against all other religions. It is on that account that the attacks of certain Christian Divines have really been most welcome to me, for they have shown at all events that I hold no brief from them, and that if I and those who honestly share my convictions claim a perfect right to the name of Christians, we do so with a good conscience. We have subjected Christianity to the severest criticism and have not found it wanting. We have done what St. Paul exhorts every Christian to do, we have proved everything, we have not been afraid to compare Christianity with any other religion, and if we have retained it, we have done so, because we found it best. All religions, Christianity not excepted, seem really to have suffered far more from their defenders than from their assailants, and I certainly know no greater danger to Christianity than that contempt of Natural Religion which has of late been expressed with so much violence by those who have so persistently attacked both the founder of this lectureship on Natural Religion and the lecturers, nay even those who have ventured to attend their lectures.

LECTURE II.

THE TRUE VALUE OF THE SACRED BOOKS

EXAMINED.

Historical Documents for Studying the Origin of Religion.

OF

RIENTAL scholars have often been charged with exaggerating the value of the Sacred Books of the East for studying the origin and growth of religion. It cannot be denied that these books are much less perfect than we could wish them to be. They are poor fragments only, and the time when they were collected and reduced to writing is in most cases far removed from the date of their original composition, still more from the times which they profess to describe. All this is true; but my critics ought to have known that, so far from wishing to hide these facts, I have myself been the first to call attention to them again and again. Wherever we meet with a religion, it has always long passed its childhood; it is generally full-grown, and presupposes a past which is far beyond the reach of any historical plummet. Even with regard to modern religions, such as Christianity and Islam, we know very little indeed about their real historical beginnings or antecedents. Though we may know their cradle and those who stood around it, the powerful

personality of the founders seems in each case to have overshadowed all that was around and before them; nay, it may sometimes have been the object of their disciples and immediate followers to represent the new religion as entirely new, as really the creation of one mind, though no historical religion can ever be that; and to ignore all historical influences that are at work in forming the mind of the real founder of an historical religion1. With regard to more ancient religions, we hardly ever reach their deepest springs, as little as we can hope to reach the lowest strata of ancient languages. And yet religion, like language, exhibits everywhere the clear traces of historical antecedents and of a continuous development.

Religious Language.

It has been my object in my former lectures to show that there is but one way by which we may get, so to say, behind that phase of a religion which is represented to us in its sacred or canonical books. Some of the most valuable historical documents of religion lie really imbedded in the language of religion, in the names of the various deities, and in the name which survives in the end as that of the one true God. Certain expressions for sacrifice also, for sin, for breath and soul and all the rest, disclose occasionally some of the religious thoughts of the people among whom these Sacred Books grew up. I have also tried to show how much may be gained by a comparison of these ancient religious terminologies, and how more particularly the religious terminology

1 See Kuenen, Hibbert Lectures, p. 189 seq.

of ancient India sheds the most welcome light on many of the religious expressions that have become obscure or altogether unmeaning even in Greek and Latin.

How should we have known that Zeus meant originally the bright light of the sky, and that deus was at first an adjective meaning bright, but for the evidence supplied to us in the Veda? This lesson of Zeus or Jupiter cannot be dinned too often into the ears of the incredulous, or rather the ignorant, who fail to see that the Pantheon of Zeus cannot be separated from Zeus himself, and that the other Olympian gods must have had the same physical beginnings as Zeus, the father of gods and men. There are still a few unbelievers left who shake their wise heads when they are told that Erinys meant the dawn, Agni fire, and Marut or Mars the stormwind, quite as certainly as that Eos meant the dawn, Helios the sun, and Selene the moon. If they did not, what did these names mean, unless they meant nothing at all!

When we have once gained in this, the earliest germinal stage of religious thought and language, a real historical background for the religions of India, Greece, and Rome, we have learnt a lesson which we may safely apply to other religions also, though no doubt with certain modifications, namely that there is a meaning in every divine name, and that an intimate relation exists between a religion and the language in which it was born and sent out into the world. When that is done, we may proceed to the Sacred Books and collect from them as much information as we can concerning the great religions of the world in their subsequent historical development.