Atheism, polytheism, and pantheism have always proved stronger than mere theism--more popular, more influential on ordinary minds. It is only in alliance with revelation that theism has been able to cope successfully with these foes. In no land, and in no age, has a theism resting exclusively on the authority of reason gained and retained the assent of more than a small minority of the community. Its adherents may have been men who did credit to their creed--honourable, high-minded, cultivated men--but they have always been few. In India, in Persia, in Greece, in Rome, some specially gifted and religious minds reached, or at least approached, theism; but, on the whole, the development of belief in all these countries was not towards but away from theism. The Israelites, although authoritatively taught monotheism, fell back again and again into polytheism. Mythology is not merely "a disease of language," but also a testimony to the fact that the minds and hearts of the mass of mankind cannot be satisfied with a Deity who is only to be apprehended by abstract thought,--a proof that while a few speculative philosophers may rest content with the God discovered by pure reason, the countless millions of their fellow-men are so influenced by sense, imagination, and feeling, that they have ever been found to substitute for such a God deities whom they could represent under visible forms, as subject to the limitations of space and time, and as actuated by the passions of humanity. Pantheism has a powerful advantage over theism, inasmuch as it can give a colouring of religion to what is virtually atheism, and a semblance of reason even to the most wildly extravagant polytheism. There is no logical necessity why a mere theist should become an atheist, but the causes which tend to produce atheism are too strong to be counteracted by any force inherent in mere theism; and hence, as a matter of historical fact, mere theism has always, even in modern Christendom, largely given place to atheism. All the powers of the world above, and of the world to come, are needed to oppose the powers of the world below, and of the world which now is. Only a much fuller exhibition of the Divine character than is presented to us by mere theism can make faith in God the ruling principle of human life. Mere theism might have sufficed us had we remained perfectly rational and perfectly sinless; but those who fancy that it is sufficient for men as they are, only make evident that they know not what men are. In the state into which we have fallen, we need a higher light to guide us than any which shines on sea or land; we need the light which only shines from the gracious countenance of Christ.