"Lo this have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions."--_Eccl._ VII. 29. The first religion was a communion with God. The Creator taught man, as a father would his children. But when man sinned, he began to seek out many inventions, and sank to that awful state of degradation hinted at in the fragmentary sketches of the popular manners and customs of the times of Abraham,--_Gen._ XII. XXV.; which Paul epitomizes with such fiery vigor in the first chapter of Romans, and which may be found fully paralleled in our own day. At the proper time, God took mankind in hand, and began to develop his great plan for giving purity to religion. So he raised up Moses, and gave to Israel the Levitical law. Or if Mr. Spencer shall deny the biblical account of the origin of the five books of Moses, he at least cannot deny that they have a being; and, placing them on the same ground of examination and criticism as Herodotus, that they were written more than a thousand years before the Christian era. Now mark. Whoever wrote them, they remained as they were first framed, and no one of the prophets, who came after, added one new idea. They only emphasized and amplified "The Law." So far then as this part of Religion was concerned, Science never helped a particle. Yea, more, the words to Moses in the wilderness were never paralleled in the utterances of man before the Christian era. "In the fulness of time God sent his own Son." However defective was the former dispensation, he, who appeared to most of the men of his day as only a carpenter's son, declared to mankind the final and perfect truth. As the system taught by Moses was not the result of any philosophical developments, but was incomparably superior to the religion of the most civilized people of the world, at whose court Moses was brought up, and was manifestly constructed _de novo_, and from some kind of revelation, so this, which the carpenter's son taught, was incomparably superior to any utterance which the human soul had up to that time, or has since, made. It comes forth at once complete and pure. It utters the highest principles in the simplest language. Indeed, nothing new was left to say when John finished his writing; and the canon might well be closed. And since that day, has Religion advanced? Not a syllable. The purest water is drank at the old fountain. But it will be said that the cause of Religion among men has advanced. Very true, but Science did not advance it. You can yet count the years on your fingers since men of Science generally ceased to be strenuously hostile to Religion. Religion, in every instance, has advanced just where it has gone back, and drank at the old fountains. Who, then, has purified Religion? God is "the agent which has effected the purification." God is he to whom Religion owes "its immense debt," not Science. He it is who has brought her up to her present high position.