In the same way in some peoples the religious faculty is so stunted as almost to be amorphous. It exists as it were in embryo; in other peoples it perplexes us by the monstrosities in which it is expressed, but the monstrosity, as we are reminded,[57] may mark a further growth which also points onward to something more complete, and may be in itself a type of things not seen as yet. Observation therefore seems to detect a religious tendency in process of evolution, and if so, the only question is as to whether that tendency develops by its own inherent power, or by a process of education intelligently conducted; in other words, whether man grows into his religion, or whether he is instructed in it by the revelation of a mind higher than his own. The New Testament writers, while proclaiming the organic unity of humanity, proclaim as clearly that the organic development of religion proceeds under Divine control. The phrase “organic development of religion” may only be a modern way of designating that long continuous process by which God reveals His mind and will for the education of the human race, which culminated when He “who at sundry times and in divers manners,” in various ways and in different measures, “spake unto the fathers by the prophets,” spoke unto us by His Son. Holy Scripture from first to last is consistent in its teaching as to this. It tells of a Divine Spirit not operative only in one race or in one part of the world during a few centuries of its history, but striving with human souls always and everywhere. It tells us that God never left the world without a witness of Himself; it reminds us of prophets—certainly not all of the one nation—who, trained to grasp and to proclaim moral and spiritual truths, were sent to lead among their fellow-men lives so pure and unselfish as profoundly to affect the moral progress of the whole human race. In a word, it reveals Deity not as apart from man and uninterested in him, but as an everlasting agent in human history,—working out an eternal purpose hid as a mystery from all ages, but now manifested in the last times to us; the purpose of gathering together not only the scattered and alienated nations, but “all things which are in heaven and which are on earth in One,” even in Christ.