r
find. Perhaps, however, that way of putting it may be objected to, on
the ground that it is a _petitio principii_ and assumes the very fact
it is necessary to prove, viz. that the lowest tribes that are or can
be known to us have made the search and given it up, whereas the
contention is that they have never made the search. That contention, I
will remark in passing, is one which never can be proved. But to those
who consider that it is probable in itself, and that it is a necessary
stage in the evolution of belief, I would point out that every search
is made in hope--or, it may be, in fear--that search presupposes hope
and fear. Vague, of course, the hope may be; scarce conscious, if
conscious at all, of what is hoped. But without hope, until there are
some dim stirrings, however vague, search is unconceivable, and it is
in and by the process of search that the hope becomes stronger and the
object sought more definite to view. Now, inasmuch as it is doubtful
whether any tribe of {30} people is without religion, it may reasonably
be held that the vast majority, at any rate, of the peoples of the
earth have proceeded from hope to aspiration and to search; and if
there should be found a tribe which had not yet entered consciously on
the search, the reasonable conclusion would be not that it is exempted
from the laws which we see exemplified in all other peoples, but that
it is tending to obey the same laws and is starting from the same point
as they,--that hope which is the desire of all nations and has been
made manifest in the Son of Man.

Whatever be the earliest history of that hope, whatever was its nature
and course in prehistoric times, it has been worked out in history in
many directions, under the influence of many errors, into many forms of
religion. But in them all we feel that there is the same striving, the
same yearning; and we see it with the same pity and distress as we may
observe the distorted motions of the man who, though partially
paralysed, yet strives to walk, and move to the place where he would
be. It is with these attempts to walk, in the hope of giving help to
them who need it, that we who are here to-day are concerned. We must
study them, if we are to {31} understand them and to remedy them. And
there is no understanding them, unless we recognise that in them all
there is the striving and yearning after God, which may be cruelly
distorted, but is always there.

It so happens that