An attempt has recently been made to place the theory of Religious Liberalism on a philosophical basis, by representing religion as a mere _sentiment_, which may be equally elicited and exemplified in various forms of belief and worship. Several writers, following in the wake of Schleiermacher, who gave such a powerful impulse to the mind of Germany, have made Religion to consist either in _a sense of dependence_, or in _a consciousness of the infinite_; and this sentiment, as well as the spontaneous intuitions of reason with which it is associated, is said to be alike natural, universal, and invariable, the essential principle of all Religion, the root whence have sprung all the various forms of belief and worship. These varieties are supposed to be more or less rational and salutary, according to the conception which they respectively exhibit of the nature and character of God,--a conception which may be endlessly diversified by the intellect, or the imagination, or the passions of different men; while all the forms of belief are radically identical, since they all spring from the same ground-principle, and are only so many distinct manifestations of it. Thus Mr. Parker tells us that, stripping the "religious sentiment" in man "of all accidental circumstances peculiar to the age, nation, sect, or individual, and pursuing a sharp and final analysis till the subject and predicate can no longer be separated, we find as the ultimate fact, that the religious sentiment is this,--'_a sense of dependence_.' This sentiment does not itself disclose the character, and still less the nature and essence, of the object on which it depends, no more than the senses declare the nature of _their_ objects. Like them it acts spontaneously and unconsciously, as soon as the outward occasion offers, with no effort of will, forethought, or making up the mind. But the religious sentiment implies its object; ... and there is but _one religion_, though _many theologies_."[232]