uman element in every form of belief, and that can only be done by what
we may call comparative spiritual anatomy, we cannot begin to deal with
the alleged extra-human elements without blundering into all imaginable
puerilities. If you think for one moment that there is not a single
religion in the world which does not come to us through the medium of a
preexisting language; and if you remember that this language embodies
absolutely nothing but human conceptions and human passions, you will see
at once that every religion presupposes its own elements as already
existing in those to whom it is addressed. I once went to a church in
London and heard the famous Edward Irving preach, and heard some of his
congregation speak in the strange words characteristic of their
miraculous gift of tongues. I had a respect for the logical basis of
this singular phenomenon. I have always thought it was natural that any
celestial message should demand a language of its own, only to be
understood by divine illumination. All human words tend, of course, to
stop short in human meaning. And the more I hear the most sacred terms
employed, the more I am satisfied that they have entirely and radically
different meanings in the minds of those who use them. Yet they deal
with them as if they were as definite as mathematical quantities or
geometrical figures. What would become of arithmetic if the figure 2
meant three for one man and five for another and twenty for a third, and
all the other numerals were in the same way variable quantities? Mighty
intelligent correspondence business men would have with each other! But
how is this any worse than the difference of opinion which led a famous
clergyman to say to a brother theologian, "Oh, I see, my dear sir, your
God is my Devil."

Man has been studied proudly, contemptuously, rather, from the point of
view supposed to be authoritatively settled. The self-sufficiency of
egotistic natures was never more fully shown than in the expositions of
the worthlessness and wretchedness of their fellow-creatures given by the
dogmatists who have "gone back," as the vulgar phrase is, on their race,
their own flesh and blood. Did you ever read what Mr. Bancroft says
about Calvin in his article on Jonathan Edwards?--and mighty well said it
is too, in my judgment. Let me remind you of it, whether you have read
it or not. "Setting himself up over against the privileged classes, he,
with a loftier pride than