After pondering over the various renderings, it occurred to me that the following definition would embrace the whole in a few words: _Religion founded on erroneous ideas of God._ But when I set this definition alongside the case of an otherwise intelligent man carrying in his trousers' pocket a raw potato as a protection against rheumatism, and alongside the case of another man carrying in his vest pocket a piece of brimstone to prevent him taking cramp in the stomach; and when I consider the case of ladies wearing earrings as a preventive against, or cure for, sore eyes; and, again, when I remembered a practice, very frequent a few years ago, of people wearing what were known as galvanic rings in the belief that these would prevent their suffering from rheumatism, I could not perceive any direct connection between such superstitious practices and religion, and the construction of a new definition was rendered necessary. The following, I think, covers the whole ground: _Beliefs and practices founded upon erroneous ideas of God and nature._ With this meaning the term "Superstition" is employed in the following pages, and if the definition commend itself to the reader, it will at once become apparent that the only way by which freedom from superstition can be attained is to search Nature and Revelation for correct views of God and His methods of working. Notwithstanding our pretensions to a correct religious knowledge, a pure theology, and freedom from everything like superstition, it is strange yet true, that, if we except the formulated reply to the question in the Westminster Catechism, "What is God," scarcely two persons--perhaps no two persons--have exactly the same idea of God. We each worship a God of our own. In one of the late Douglas Jerrold's "Hedgehog Letters" he introduces two youths passing St Giles' Church at a lonely hour, when the one addresses the other thus:--"The old book and the parson tell us that at the beginning God made man in his own image. We have now reversed this, and make God in our image." A sad truth, although not new; Saint Paul made a similar remark to the philosophic Athenians; but the remark applies not to this age or to Saint Paul's age alone--its applicability extends to every age and every people. As Goethe remarks, "Man never knows how anthropomorphic he is." Our minds instinctively seek an explanation of the cause or causes of the different phenomena constantly occurring around us, but instinct does not supply the solution. Only by patient watching and consideration can this be arrived at; but in former ages scientific methods of investigation were either not known, or not cared for, and so men were satisfied with merely guessing at the causes of natural phenomena, and these guesses were made from the standpoint of their own human passionate intelligence. Alongside the intelligence everywhere observable in the operations of nature they placed their own passionate humanity, they projected