There are great religions and small ones, and as with works of art, we are apt to find in each, more or less, what we ourselves bring to it. Jeremiah, when travelling through Ancient Egypt, felt indignation at the sight of gods with hawks' or jackals' heads; while the touching confessions of the dead, consigned to papyrus--"I have not killed! I have not been idle! I have not caused others to weep!"--only drew from him exclamations of anger and contempt. Herodotus, a century later, also understood nothing of this world of mysterious tombs, with its moral teachings thousands of years old, or of the great spiritual revelation with which the land of the Pharaohs is impregnated. Both alike--Jeremiah, unmoved by the cruelty and hardness of Jehovah, Herodotus, oblivious to the sensuality and immorality of his own gods, who, according to Xenophon, were adepts at thieving and lying--shook their heads in dismay before the Egyptian symbols. But Plato, on the contrary, was able to appreciate the harmonious beauty of a divine Trinity, sublime incarnation of that which is "eternal, unproduced, indestructible . . . eternally uniform and consistent, and monoeidic with itself." There are, no doubt, many Jeremiahs to-day, but there are also understanding souls capable of taking an interest in even the most bizarre manifestations of religious faith. These throw a revelatory light upon some of the most painful problems of our time, as well as upon the secret places of the human soul where lurks an ever eager hope, often frustrated, and alas, often deceived. All religious sects and reformers since the time of Christ have only succeeded in modifying, renovating, uplifting or debasing the eternal principles already enunciated by the Son of Man. He it was who founded the integral religion for all time, but as it permits of the most varied interpretations, innumerable and widely divergent sects have been able to graft themselves upon its eternal trunk. After Him, said Renan--who has been wrongly considered an opponent of Christ--there is nothing to be done save to develop and to fertilize, for His perfect idealism is the golden rule for a detached and virtuous life. He was the first to proclaim the kingdom of the spirit, and has established for ever the ideal of pure religion; and as His religion is a religion of _feeling_, all movements which seek to bring about the kingdom of heaven upon earth can attach themselves to His principles and to His way of salvation. Further, any religious movement which appeals to our higher instincts must eventually contribute to the triumph of human brotherhood and to the beautifying of human life--which increases the interest of studying all attempts at revival and reform. Such a study will prevent us from being overwhelmed by the uglinesses of life, or from becoming sunk in a morass of material pleasures, and will open up ways of escape into the heavenly realms.