Here we have once more the same process before our eyes. The human mind begins with being startled by a single or repeated event, such as the lightning striking a tree and devouring a whole forest, or a spark of fire breaking forth from wood being rubbed against wood, whether in a forest, or in the wheel of a carriage, or at last in a fire-drill, devised on purpose. Man then begins to wonder at what to him is a miracle, none the less so because it is a fact, a simple, natural fact. He sees the effects of a power, but he can only guess at its cause, and if he is to speak of it, he can only do so by speaking of it as an agent, or as something like a human agent, and, if in some respects not quite human, in others more than human or superhuman. Thus the concept of Fire grew; and while it became more and more generalized, it also became more sublime, more incomprehensible, more divine. Without Agni, without fire, light, and warmth, life would have been impossible. Hence he became the author and giver of life, of the life of plants and animals and of men; and his favor having once been implored for "light and life and all things," what wonder that in the minds of some poets, and in the traditions of this or that village-community he should have been raised to the rank of a supreme ruler, a god above all gods, their own true god! * * * * * We now proceed to consider the powers which the ancient poets might have discovered in the air, in the clouds, and, more particularly, in those meteoric conflicts which by thunder, lightning, darkness, storms, and showers of rain must have taught man that very important lesson that he was not alone in this world. Many philosophers, as you know, believe that all religion arose from fear or terror, and that without thunder and lightning to teach us, we should never have believed in any gods or god. This is a one-sided and exaggerated view. Thunderstorms, no doubt, had a large share in arousing feelings of awe and terror, and in making man conscious of his weakness and dependence. Even in the Veda, Indra is introduced as saying: "Yes, when I send thunder and lightning, then you believe in me." But what we call religion would never have sprung from fear and terror alone. _Religion is trust_, and that trust arose in the beginning from the impressions made on the mind and heart of man by the order and wisdom of nature, and more particularly by those regularly recurring events, the return of the sun, the revival of the moon, the order of the seasons, the law of cause and effect, gradually discovered in all things, and traced back in the end to a cause of all causes, by whatever name we choose to call it.