something in the nature
of man, or in the exterior conditions of humanity, which invariably
leads man to worship, and which determines him, as by the force of an
original instinct, or an outward, conditioning necessity, to recognize
and bow down before a Superior Power. The full recognition and adequate
explanation of the facts of religious history will constitute a
_philosophy of religion_.

The hypotheses which have been offered in explanation of the religious
phenomena of the world are widely divergent, and most of them are, in
our judgment, eminently inadequate and unsatisfactory. The following
enumeration may be regarded as embracing all that are deemed worthy of
consideration.

I. The phenomenon of religion had its origin in SUPERSTITION, that is,
in a _fear_ of invisible and supernatural powers, generated by ignorance
of nature.

II. The phenomenon of religion is part of that PROCESS or EVOLUTION OF
THE ABSOLUTE (i.e., the Deity), which gradually unfolding itself in
nature, mind, history, and _religion_, attains to perfect
self-consciousness in philosophy.

III. The phenomenon of religion has its foundation in FEELING--_the
feeling of dependence and of obligation_; and that to which the mind, by
spontaneous intuition or instinctive faith, traces this dependence and
obligation we call God.

IV. The phenomenon of religion had its outbirth in the spontaneous
apperceptions of REASON, that is, the necessary _a priori ideas of the
Infinite, the Perfect, the Unconditioned Cause, the Eternal Being_,
which are evoked into consciousness in presence of the changeful and
contingent phenomena of the world.

V. The phenomenon of religion had its origin in EXTERNAL REVELATION, to
which _reason_ is related as a purely passive organ, and _heathenism_ as
a feeble relic.

As a philosophy of religion--an attempt to supply the rationale of the
religious phenomena of the world, the first hypothesis is a skeptical
philosophy, which necessarily leads to _Atheism_. The second is an
idealistic philosophy (absolute idealism), which inevitably lands in
_Pantheism_. The third is an intuitional or "faith-philosophy," which
finally ends in _Mysticism_. The fourth is a rationalistic or
"spiritualistic" philosophy, which yields pure _Theism_. The last is an
empirical philosophy, which derives all religion from instruction, and
culminates in _Dogmatic Theology_.

In view of these diverse and conflicting theories, the question which
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