This transformation of the central figure necessarily transforms also the whole idea of religion, which must take its colour from that centre. Revelation from heaven being no longer possible, its place must be supplied by study on earth: revealed laws being no longer attainable, it becomes the duty of the Humanitarian to discover natural laws. This duty is the more cheering from the manifest failure of revealed laws, as exemplified in popular Christianity. "Law," in the mouth of the believer in revelation, means a command issued by God; the "laws of Nature" are the rules laid down by God, in accordance with which all things move; they are the behests of the Creator of Nature, the controlling wires of the mechanism, held by the hand of God. But "law" in the mouth of the Rationalist means nothing more than the observed and registered invariable sequence of events. Thus it is said "a stone falls to the ground in obedience to the law of gravitation." By the "law of gravitation" the Christian would mean that God had ordered that all stones _should_ so fall. The Rationalist would simply mean that all stones _do_ so fall, and that invariable sequence he calls the "law of gravitation." Obedience to the laws of Nature replaces, in the religion of Humanity, obedience to the laws of God. As there is no inspired revelation of these laws the student must carefully and patiently ascertain them, either by direct observation, or most often, in the books of those who have devoted their lives to the elucidation of Nature's code. Scientific books will, in fact, replace the Bible, and by the study of the laws of health, both physical, moral, and mental, the Rationalist will ascertain the conditions which surround him to which he must conform himself if he desires to retain physical, moral, and mental vigour. This difference in the authority which is obeyed leads naturally to the difference of morality between the orthodox Christian and the Rationalist. Christian morality consists of obedience to the will of God, as revealed in the Bible. The grand difficulty regarding this obedience is, that the will of Jehovah, as revealed to the Jews at different times, varies so much from age to age that the most zealous Christian must fail to obey all the conflicting behests prefaced by a "Thus saith the Lord." God would, of course, never command any one to do a thing which was directly wrong, yet God distinctly said: "Thou shalt not suffer a Witch to live;" and God sanctioned Slavery, and God commanded Persecution on account of religious convictions: true, Christians plead that all these laws are obsolete, but what is that but to acknowledge that revealed morality is obsolete, _i.e._, that it was never revealed by God at all. For a command to persecute must be either right or wrong: if right, it is the duty of Christians to obey it, and to raise once more the stakes of Smithfield for heretics and unbelievers; if wrong, it can never have come from God at all, and must