temporal blessings for the community, or even to personal advantages for the individual. Or the punctilious performance of each and every detail of the rite might tend to become an end in itself and displace the spiritual communion, the attainment of which had been from the beginning the highest, even if not the only or the most prominent, {209} end which the rite might subserve. The difference between the possibilities which the rite might have realised and the actual purposes for which it had come to be used before the birth of Christ is a difference patent to the most casual observer of the facts. The dissatisfaction felt alike by Plato and the Hebrew prophets with the rite as it had come to be practised may be regarded, if we choose so to regard it, as the necessary consequence of pre-existing facts, and as necessarily entailing the rejection or the reconstitution of the rite. As a matter of history, the rite was reconstituted and not rejected; and as reconstituted it became the central fact of the Christian religion. It became the means whereby, through Christ, all men might be brought to God. We may say, if we will, that a new meaning was put into the rite, or that its true meaning was now made manifest. The facts themselves clearly indicate that from the beginning the rite was the means whereby a society sought or might seek communion with its god. They also indicate that the rite of animal sacrifice came to be found insufficient as a means. It was through our Lord that mankind learned what sacrifice was needed--learned to "offer and present unto thee, O Lord, ourselves, our {210} souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy and lively sacrifice unto thee." That is the sacrifice Christ showed us the example of; that is the example which the missionary devotes himself to follow and to teach. {211} MORALITY In this lecture I propose to consider the question whether morality is based on religion or religion on morality. It is a question which may be approached from the point of view either of philosophy or of history. Quite recently it has been treated from the former point of view by Professor Höffding in _The Philosophy of Religion_ (translated into English, 1906); and from the point of view of the history of morality by Mr. Hobhouse in his _Morals in Evolution_ (1906). It may, of course, also be quite properly approached from the point of view of the history of religion; and from whatever standpoint it is treated, the question is one of importance for the missionary, both because of its intrinsic interest for the philosophy of religion, and because its discussion is apt to proceed on a mistaken view of facts in the history of religion. About those facts and their meaning, the missionary, who is to be properly equipped for his work, should be in no doubt: a right view and a proper estimate of the facts are essential both for {212} his practical work and for the theoretical justification of his position.