lows, therefore, that a theoretico-negative infidel or atheist is an impossible anomaly.

Indeed, we believe that of the vast number of infidels which the world to-day reckons, very few there are who stop to consider this point or who care about it. This kind of infidelity does not concern them. Nor is practical infidelity, although we know full well that there are many practical infidels or people who, knowing God, act as though they did not, that in which they are chiefly interested. The infidelity which most infidels to-day are pleased to defend is of the theoretico-positive genus. This affords better battling-ground, for it admits of a claim to honesty. With what would seem to be a very commendable candor, they will admit that they may be wrong, but if so, they are honestly wrong. They will tell you that you may be right, there may be a God, but they cannot see it. They wish they could believe like you, but they honestly cannot. However, continuing, they will tell you that, if there is a God, He is just. Now, being just, they have no fear, for, as their great apostle, Ingersoll, is reported to have said, they are able to argue their case before any just judge. On the face of it all, this appears very plausible and candid; but, when examined, will be seen to be downright sophistry. No right-minded man will allow himself to be deceived by it. Long ago, Seneca said: "Those who assert that they do not believe in God, are liars; at night and alone, their doubts teach them the contrary." This statement is borne out by the conduct of infidels who, almost invariably, at life's close are overcome by fear, and very frequently do, what in every case would come to pass were it not for pride and public opinion, renounce their old atheistic tendencies, and turn to God. Plato says of his own times: "There is no one who, in his youth, having learned to believe in the non-existence of the gods, perseveres in his faith to old age." Santhibal, a celebrated infidel of the seventeenth century, as Bayle relates, testifies of the whole infidel school that there is no one in it sincere in his belief, that all retract before death. With Bayle, we may sum up in a few words the honesty of all infidel professions: "Infidels say more than they believe, and are led more by vanity than by conscience. They mistake their audacity for the mark of a strong mind. Hence they put forward objections against the Gospel and God which they themselves do not believe. They do this so persistently that finally it becomes a habit for them. If to this we join their depravity of morals and that full indulgence of their passions to which, following infidel teaching, they are allowed to give full sway, we have the true solution of their professions."-(Liberatore, de Existentia Dei.) In whatever light, therefore, we view infidelity, we find that it is untenable, and that men adhere to it less

from conviction than from caprice. Man naturally has a belief in the Divinity.

For man is His

From this it follows, as a direct corollary, that man not only must believe in, but must practise, religion. If there is a God, that God must be worshipped. There can be no dispute about this. If God is, He is benign, good, just; He is Creator, Sovereign Master, Lord. We do not now speak of Him in relation to the Christian economy. We speak of him absolutely, as God. As God, He is all and more than we have said He is. As God, then, He must be worshipped, and be worshipped by man. creature, and bears a relation of recipiency to God as Creator, Sovereign Master, Lord; to God as benign, good, and just. Man is, therefore, bound to worship God. God being Creator, man is bound to worship Him with far more justice than the child is held to reverence his parents. Now, this relation of man to God, this obligation to worship, what is it but the essence of religion? Given man, therefore religion follows as a corollary to God's existence, and God's existence is a fact that all men, to be consistent, must concede. We think, then, we are not saying too much when we affirm that all men are inclined to religion.

Our conclusion is not a little strengthened by what we see every day occurring around us. The topic of religion seems to be allabsorbing. Ever agitating, the mind is ever grappling with it, ever seeking to find rest by determining on some satisfactory solution. It is in vain that we seek to drive it from us. Like Banquo's ghost, it will not "down." It is ever demanding settlement at our hands, and will give us no peace until its demands are satisfied and, we may add, until satisfied correctly. Outside the true religion no one is at rest. To this constant unrest, arising from uncertainty, if we leave out those who, having been born in, have persevered in, or having sought, have found, the true religion and in it enjoy peace and tranquillity, there is no exception. All else alike-and the infidel as well-are subject to uneasiness and discomfort of mind. They are ever discussing with themselves, and are ever ready to discuss with any other willing to enter the arena, the question of religion. Though we have excepted him who, enjoying the true religion, enjoys peace, from the worry and excitement of unrest and the consequent all-absorbing desire of him who is unsettled to cross swords with an antagonist, apparent or real, in religious controversy, we make no exception of him to the general rule that religion is for all a subject of paramount interest. On the contrary, we say for him, even more than for others, religion is the uppermost thought of the mind. Now, this strange adherence of religion to the mind, this constant seeking for recognition, this refusal to be cast aside, is a phenomenon peculiar to religion

alone. Of no other subject is it true. Any other subject may by great effort be dismissed. We may refuse to think longer on a beautiful picture, a lovely face, or a handsome figure; a poem will be forgotten, scientific problems will cease to interest; politics have their season and are succeeded by quiet; tariff to-day may excite the country, but to-morrow it will be something else; even stocks, with all their excitement of rise and fall, of pleasure and profit, may loose their hold; any and all other subjects we may refuse to think on, but uppermost still there remains the subject of religion, and this by no effort can we shake off. After the mind has travelled about, after it has buried itself in investigation in vain quest of diversion and forgetfulness, unerringly and undeviatingly, as infallibly as the needle turns towards the pole, back must it turn to the old question of religion. This persistency of the subject of religion as a problem adhering to and perplexing the mind, this refusal to be driven forth, leads us to conclude that the idea of religion is, in a wide sense at least, innate in the mind of man, and that just as truly as man is a rational, so may he be called a religious, animal. "Tis the divinity that stirs within us."

A circumstance in Greek history forcibly evinces this religious craving of the mind. We learn, on the testimony of Juvenal, Persius, and Horace, all of whom, however, cite the fact but to ridicule it, that many Greeks, after becoming convinced of the hollowness and sham of paganism, and perceiving its utter untenableness, were yet unwilling to abandon themselves to total unbelief. As an alternative, they chose rather to cast their lot with the Jews, whose religion, while not believing, they saw to be more consistent, and if it did not satisfy, tended, at least, to relieve them of the desolation of paganism, or worse, no religion. Accordingly, with this end in view, without caring for the reality, they adopted the letter and ceremonial of Judaism.

As is the experience of the individual, such, also, is the universal experience of the race. Whenever and wherever we find man, there we also find religion. It was not the Jews alone who possessed a religion. No nation, no people destitute of it has ever existed. Plutarch we believe it is who says, it would be more wonderful to find a city without walls, laws, and government, than a people without the knowledge of God. Trace back the history of nations and peoples, go back as far as history leads us; leaving history, march into the realms of tradition, until tradition itself is lost in the "twilight of fable," and at no time and in no place will you find a people who worshipped not God in one or another manner. The ancient Chinese, 3370 years before Christ, followed a system of natural philosophy given them by the great Fo-hi. Succeeding this, there was introduced a religion which gave su

preme homage to Tien. Subject to Tien, or Heaven, were many subordinate gods. In the course of time Buddhism crept in. The Buddhists expected a redeemer who was to come from the west. In India, after the pantheistic religion first practised by the inhabitants, Buddhism and Brahmanism had a fierce and long strife for the ascendency. It appears that Brahmanism was at first successful. But Buddhism had its day of triumph also, for we read that it succeeded Brahmanism. The Hindoos possessed sacred books which they called Vedas. 'These contained all revealed truths, and form the four most ancient collections of documents bearing on religion." Their contents were said to have been given by the Deity. Tradition says that Brahma appeared in person to the Hindoos. A most firm belief was entertained in the coming of a promised saviour. The Chaldeans worshipped the stars. The sun was their chief god. The Persians had a dualistic religion. They honored Ormuzd as the true and eternal God, while they feared Ahriman as the spirit of darkness. What seems to be a later invention is that Ormuzd and Ahriman were the sons of an omnipotent being, Zervana Acarena. The resurrection of the dead was believed in, and its accomplishment was attributed to Sosoish. Astrology was the basis of all religion in Egypt. The chief gods of the Egyptians-for they had a multiplicity of deities-were Isis and Osiris; and supreme honor was paid the latter, who was called the sun-god. But the Egyptians did not confine themselves to planets in their worship of gods. They worshipped animals, many of which they deemed sacred. The orgies of Egyptian worship are revolting in the extreme. In this respect the Egyptians were below all of the ancient nations. Two systems of religion seem to have obtained amongst the Greeks, one, that of the vulgar, was at first universal and consisted in the worship of the Olympic gods, chief among which was Zeus; the other was an esoteric religion, or religion of the wise, which gradually began to obtain ground as the former lost it. This second proposed a belief in a first being, and was altogether more deserving of consideration than the former religion of the Greeks; yet it was hollow and hypocritical, and entirely unable to satisfy the acute minds of a people who had become tired of sham, and longed for something more substantial to relieve them of the desolation which weighed on their spirit. The religion of Rome, as far as Rome possessed a religion characteristically Roman, was in form monotheistic. After Rome became rich and powerful, and even before, she copied Greece. Thus did it come that Rome worshipped so many gods that it was said of her that she worshipped more gods than there were planets in the heavens. Yet the religion of Rome never entirely lost its monotheistic form. St. Augustine affirms that all the Roman gods cen

tred in one. But long before Christianity appeared knocking for admission at her gates, Rome had ceased to possess any religion. at all. Infidelity was the popular profession.

To this universal existence of religion savage nations offer no exception. The discovery of the new world opened up a country inhabited by a people who must have been separated for centuries from the rest of mankind, but who, nevertheless, amidst virgin forests and trackless wastes, looked up in awe to the "Great Spirit" or Manitou. The inhabitants of Central Africa, as well as the Pacific isles, to-day practise a rude form of religion. In a word, nowhere and at no time do we find a people without some kind of a religion. Sometimes the religion found is coarse and primitive, sometimes sensual and hellish; nevertheless, the practising of it even in these forms shows a consistency and conformity to nature of which our modern infidel, if we are to believe himself, is wholly bereft.

Besides this universality of religion, teaching that the religious idea must be innate in the mind of man, there are other striking features which will not have escaped any one's notice. One is, that nearly all peoples seem to have a tradition of the fall of the race. Thus, for instance, the northern nations have a tradition that the ases or gods, in the beginning of the world, lived in Asgard or Paradise, from which they were expelled because of their lust and avarice. The Hindoos speak of four ages, in the first of which, called the age of truth, lived Brahma, who, because of pride, was expelled from Brahmapatna or Paradise. The Persians, also, on the teaching of the Zend-Avesta, believed that the world had four ages, in the first of which men dwelt in the land of Ormuzd and enjoyed the "hundred happinesses"; but having allowed themselves to be deceived by Ahriman, they fell from their high estate. The Chinese have a legend, which says that before Fo-hi came into the world, men lived in a state of perfect happiness and in complete accord with the brute creation. After Fo-hi, begotten of a dragon, appeared, having set himself to acquire knowledge and succeeding, happiness, which till then reigned, was dispelled by knowledge. All will perceive what a similarity these traditions bear to that known as the Christian, founded on the Mosaic account; also, how natural are the divergencies noticeable.

A second feature is, that all nations retained a vague conception of the One True God. This may not at first strike all as being true, and yet it is, strictly. At first glance it would seem that the multiplicity of gods worshipped contradicted the monotheistic idea. A little further thought will show that it does not. Although many gods were recognized by ancient peoples, yet were they all recognized as subordinate to some one supreme God. We think it will be difficult to point out a single nation of which the contrary