to new wants. It should not be otherwise in the moral and social worlds. The only true progress there, also, is that continuous and consistent development which can only be secured through true conservatism through retaining, applying, and utilising whatever truth and goodness the past has brought down to the present; and the only true conservatism is that which secures against stagnation and death by continuous progress. Therefore it is that, alike in matters of civil polity, of scientific research, and of religious life, wisdom lies in combining the conservative with the progressive spirit, the principle of authority with the principle of liberty, due respect to the collective reason in history with due respect to the rights of the individual reason. The man who has not humility enough to feel that he is but one among the living millions of men, and that his whole generation is but a single link in the great chain of the human. race—who is arrogant enough to fancy that wisdom on any great human interest has begun with himself, and that he may consequently begin history for himself,-the man who is not conservative to the extent of possessing this humility, and shrinking from this arrogance, is no truly free man, but the slave of his own vanity, and the inheritance which his fathers have left him will be little increased by him. The man, on the other hand, who always accepts what is as what ought to be; who identifies the actual with the reasonable; who would have to-morrow exactly like to-day; who would hold fast what Providence is most clearly showing ought to pass away, or to pass into something better, the man, in a word, who would lay an arrest on the germs of life and truth, and prevent them from sprouting and ripening—is the very opposite of genuinely conservative-is the most dangerous of destructives. There is nothing so conservative against decay and dissolution as natural growth and orderly progress. The truth just stated is, as I have said, of universal application. But it is nowhere more applicable than in the inquiry on which we are engaged. The great idea of God-the most sublime and important of all ideas—has come to us in a wondrous manner through the minds and hearts of countless generations which it has exercised and sustained, which it has guided in darkness, strengthened in danger, and consoled in affliction. It has come to us by a long, unbroken tradition; and had it not come to us, we should of a certainty not have found it out for ourselves. We should have had to supply its place, to fill "the aching void" within us caused by its absence, with some far lower idea, perhaps with some wild fiction, some foul idol. Probably we cannot estimate too humbly the amount or worth of the religious knowledge which we should have acquired, sup posing we acquired any, if we had been left wholly to our own unaided exertions-if we had been cut off from the general reason of our race, and from the Divine Reason, which has never ceased to speak in and to our race. While, however, the idea of God has been brought to us, and is not independently wrought out by us, no man is asked to accept it blindly or slavishly; no man is asked to forego in the slightest degree even before this the most venerable and general of the beliefs of humanity, the rights of his own individual reason. He is free to examine the grounds of it, and to choose according to the result of his examination. His acceptance of the idea, his acquiescence in the belief, is of worth only if it be the free acceptance of, the loving acquiescence in, what his reason, heart, and conscience testify to be true and good. Therefore, neither in this idea or belief itself, nor in the way in which it has come to us, is there any restriction or repression of our mental liberty. And the mere rejection of it is no sign, as some seem to fancy, of intellectual freedom, of an independent judgment. It is no evidence of a man's being freer from incredulity than the most superstitious of his neighbours. "To disbelieve is to believe," says Whately. "If one man believes there is a God, and another that there is no God, whichever holds the less reasonable of these two opinions is chargeable with credulity. For the only way to avoid credulity and incredulity—the two necessarily going together—is to listen to, and yield to the best evidence, and to believe and disbelieve on good grounds." These are wise words of Dr Whately. Whenever reason has been awakened to serious reflection on the subject, the vast majority of men have felt themselves unable to believe that this mighty universe, so wondrous in its adjustments and adaptations, was the product of chance, or dead matter, or blind force-that the physical, mental, and moral order which they everywhere beheld implied no Supreme Intelligence and Will; and the few who can believe it, have assuredly no right, simply on the ground of such ability, to assume that they are less credulous, freer thinkers, than others. The disbelief of the atheist must ever seem to all men but himself to require more faith, more credulity, than the beliefs of all the legends of the Talmud,1 1 See Appendix V. NO RELI THEISM AND PANTHEISM WITH THEISM-THE THREE I. THERE are three great theistic religions. All of them can scarcely be supposed to be perfect. It is most unlikely that they should all be equal in rank and value. But to determine the position and worth of a religion, whether theistic or nontheistic, it is indispensable that we have some notion of what religion is in itself. It is very difficult to give a correct definition or accurate description of religion. And the reason is that religion is so wide and diversified a thing. It has spread over the whole earth, and it has assumed an almost countless variety of forms. Some sense of an invisible power or powers ruling his destiny is manifested by man alike in the lowest |