natural creed, it
will be found that instinctively and inevitably it asks for more. Such a
creed by itself has excited more longings than it has satisfied, and
raised more perplexities than it has set at rest. It is true that it
has supplied men with a sufficient analysis of the worth they attach to
life, and of the momentous issues attendant on the way in which they
live it. But when they come practically to choose their way, they find
that such religion is of little help to them. It never puts out a hand
to lift or lead them. It is an alluring voice, heard far off through a
fog, and calling to them, '_Follow me!_' but it leaves them in the fog
to pick their own way out towards it, over rocks and streams and
pitfalls, which they can but half distinguish, and amongst which they
may be either killed or crippled, and are almost certain to grow
bewildered. And even should there be a small minority, who feel that
this is not true of themselves, they can hardly help feeling that it is
true of the world in general. A purely natural theism, with no organs of
human speech, and with no machinery for making its spirit articulate,
never has ruled men, and, so far as we can see, never possibly can rule
them. The choices which our life consists of are definite things. The
rule which is to guide our choices must be something definite also. And
here it is that natural theism fails. It may supply us with the major
premiss, but it is vague and uncertain about the minor. It can tell us
with sufficient emphasis that all vice is to be avoided; it is
continually at a loss to tell us whether this thing or whether that
thing is vicious. Indeed, this practical insufficiency of natural theism
is borne witness to by the very existence of all alleged revelations.
For, if none of these be really the special word of God, a belief in
them is all the more a sign of a general need in man. If none of them
represent the actual attainment of help, they all of them embody the
passionate and persistent cry for it.

We shall understand this more clearly if we consider one of the first
characteristics that a revelation necessarily claims, and the results
that are at this moment, in a certain prominent case, attending on a
denial of it. The characteristic I speak of is an absolute
infallibility. Any supernatural religion that renounces its claim to
this, it is clear can profess to be a semi-revelation only. It is a
hybrid thing, partly natural and partly supe