The religions of all nations are derived from each nation's different reception of the poetic genius, which is everywhere called the spirit of prophecy. _Blake._ The Christian has not escaped the dangers of the common lot. He too, despite his own contrary principles, has, from the beginning of the Christian Church, been tempted as we all are to trust to mechanism and even to sacrifice in its favour the powers of life. We ought not to be surprised; what else can reasonably be expected? A good machine, whether it be made of steel and brass, or of language, or of settled formulae and plans, or of any other product of life, is an admirable servant. It is convenient; it brings satisfaction to widespread and deeply-rooted needs of life itself. Moreover there is nothing mysterious (so it seems), or even problematic, about it. The plain man is not called upon to question or wonder or speculate in regard to anything behind it, any powers or vague connexions with powers, not understood. The good machine does what it has to do and there's an end of it. A man knows where he is when he has such a thing—or when it has him. There is even a sense of comfort and security in being ruled and cared for by it, as, for example, in the case of the machinery of a State. In this difficult world there seems, indeed there is, need for something of the kind to supply a considerable part of our religious demand. We are social beings; we are, as we are beginning to see more plainly, brothers in a community; we must organize our religion as we organize everything else in which the community of persons has its common interest. And God, the Christian may say, and has said, would not leave us, has not left us, to uncertainty and to our questioning and wondering and speculative adventure. He has provided answers to our questions, facts in response to our wondering, an open view for our speculation. Or, to put it in another way, he has given us a 'plan' or 'scheme,' or an ecclesiastical apparatus, of salvation; he has revealed religious truth to us and marked out an established method of approaching him and securing our own safety in respect of his judgement and our destiny at his hands. Nothing of so great importance has been left, could have been left, in the hands of men, to find out or not find out—poor creatures that we are.