I hope the time will come when the subterranean area of human religion will be rendered more and more accessible, ... and that the Science of Religion, which at present is but a desire and a seed, will in time become a fulfilment, a plenteous harvest. When that time of harvest has come, when the deepest foundations of all the religions of the world have been laid free and restored, who knows but that those very foundations may serve once more, like the catacombs, or like the crypts beneath our old cathedrals, as a place of refuge for those who, to whatever creed they may belong, long for something better, purer, older, and truer than what they can find in the statutable sacrifices, services, and sermons of the days in which their lot on earth has been cast; some who have learnt to put away childish things, call them genealogies, legends, miracles, or oracles, but who cannot part with the childlike faith of their heart. Each believer may bring down with him into that quiet crypt what he values most, his own pearl of great price--the Hindu, his innate disbelief in this world, his unhesitating belief in another world; the Buddhist, his perception of an eternal law, his submission to it, his gentleness, his pity; the Mohammedan, if nothing else, his sobriety; the Jew, his clinging through good and evil days to the one God, who loveth righteousness and whose name is 'I am'; the Christian, that which is better than all, if those who doubt it would only try it--our love of God, call Him what you like, the infinite, the invisible, the immortal, the father, the highest Self, above all, and through all, and in all, manifested in our love of man, our love of the living, our love of the dead, our living and undying love. _Hibbert Lectures._ If we see the same doctrines, sometimes uttered even in the very same words, by the Apostles, and by what people call the false prophets, of the heathen world, we need not grudge them these precious pearls. When two religions say the same thing, it is not always the same thing; but even if it is, should we not rather rejoice and try with all our might to add to what may be called the heavenly dowry of the human race, the common stock of truth which, as we are told, is not far from every one of us, if only we feel after it and find it? _Gifford Lectures, I._