Every religion, even the most imperfect and degraded, has something that ought to be sacred to us, for there is in all religions a secret yearning after the true, though unknown, God. Whether we see the Papua squatting in dumb meditation before his fetish, or whether we listen to Firdusi exclaiming: 'The heighth and the depth of the whole world have their centre in Thee, O my God! I do not know Thee what Thou art: but I know that Thou art what Thou alone canst be,'--we ought to feel that the place whereon we stand is holy ground. There are philosophers, no doubt, to whom both Christianity and all other religions are exploded errors, things belonging to the past, and to be replaced by more positive knowledge. To them the study of the religions of the world could only have a pathological interest, and their hearts could never warm at the sparks of truth that light up, like stars, the dark yet glorious night of the ancient world. They tell us that the world has passed through the phases of religious and metaphysical errors, in order to arrive at the safe haven of positive knowledge of facts. But if they would but study positive facts, if they would but read, patiently and thoughtfully, the history of the world, as it is, not as it might have been: they would see that, as in geology, so in the history of human thought, theoretic uniformity does not exist, and that the past is never altogether lost. The oldest formations of thought crop out everywhere, and if we dig but deep enough, we shall find that even the sandy desert in which we are asked to live, rests everywhere on the firm foundation of that primeval, yet indestructible granite of the human soul,--religious faith. There are other philosophers again who would fain narrow the limits of the Divine government of the world to the history of the Jewish and of the Christian nations, who would grudge the very name of religion to the ancient creeds of the world, and to whom the name of natural religion has almost become a term of reproach. To them, too, I should like to say that if they would but study positive facts, if they would but read their own Bible, they would find that the greatness of Divine Love cannot be measured by human standards, and that God has never forsaken a single human soul that has not first forsaken Him. 'He hath made of one blood all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of the earth; and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation: that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us,' If they would but dig deep enough, they too would find that what they contemptuously call natural religion, is in reality the greatest gift that God has bestowed on the children of man, and that without it, revealed religion itself would have no firm foundation, no living roots in the heart of man.