Canon Liddon informs us that "man is ever feeling after God," and that "the thought of God is always latent in the mind of man." "Cicero's statement that there is no nation so barbarous and wild as not to have believed in some divinity is still, notwithstanding certain apparent exceptions, true. A nation of pure Atheists has yet to be discovered." [276] Dr. Flint devotes the seventh of his Lectures on Anti-Theistic theories to the discussion of the question, "Are there tribes of Atheists?" and he comes to the conclusion that "an impartial examination of the relevant facts shows that religion is virtually universal." [277] The Bishop of London is of opinion that "man is a praying animal. He always has prayed throughout his history. It is a human instinct. This instinct of prayer points to the existence of God." [278] Dr. Warschauer affirms that the spiritual faculty--a consciousness of "the existence of spiritual realities, of a world beyond the senses"--"constitutes a universal human endowment." [279] Bishop Diggle bids us remember that "human nature is ineradicably religious." [280] THE RATIONALIST'S CONTENTION. The Rationalist asks: What grounds have we for assuming that the existence of religious belief points to the existence of a religious instinct? Is not a man's religion determined by the geographical accident of his birth? Has not his religion to be diligently instilled into him from the cradle? How, then, can it be said that man is by nature religious? How can it be said that the craving for a deity is instinctive? To this the Christian apologist may reply that, however much the precise form of the religious belief may be due to education, no belief of any kind could be engendered without a predisposition to accept it. Have we not seen, however, that primitive beliefs were the natural offspring of fear and wonder? Inability to account for phenomena, ignorance of the laws of nature, and those abnormal psychical experiences concerning which science has but now commenced to furnish natural explanations, all combined to turn primitive men into staunch supernaturalists. For the same reasons, children in years as well as children in knowledge have always been predisposed to belief in the supernatural. This predisposition (it can hardly be called an instinct) may be universal, but it does not lead necessarily to belief in a deity. For that there must be education. If it be an instinct, it is not a religious instinct, although a soil eminently suitable for the sowing of supernatural dogmas.