vitality. Those who build without
allowing for it find their well-constructed edifices riven as by an
earthquake. Those who hold it to be outgrown find the wildest
superstitions succeed its denial. So much is it an integral part of
humanity, that man _will_ have some answer to his questionings; rather
an answer that is false, than none. If he cannot find religious truth,
he will take religious error rather than no religion, and will accept
the crudest and most incongruous ideals rather than admit that the ideal
is non-existent.

Religion, then, meets this craving, and taking hold of the constituent
in human nature that gives rise to it, trains it, strengthens it,
purifies it and guides it towards its proper ending--the union of the
human Spirit with the divine, so "that God may be all in all."[8]

The next question which meets us in our enquiry is: What is the source
of religions? To this question two answers have been given in modern
times--that of the Comparative Mythologists and that of the Comparative
Religionists. Both base their answers on a common basis of admitted
facts. Research has indisputably proved that the religions of the world
are markedly similar in their main teachings, in their possession of
Founders who display superhuman powers and extraordinary moral
elevation, in their ethical precepts, in their use of means to come into
touch with invisible worlds, and in the symbols by which they express
their leading beliefs. This similarity, amounting in many cases to
identity, proves--according to both the above schools--a common origin.

But on the nature of this common origin the two schools are at issue.
The Comparative Mythologists contend that the common origin is the
common ignorance, and that the loftiest religious doctrines are simply
refined expressions of the crude and barbarous guesses of savages, of
primitive men, regarding themselves and their surroundings. Animism,
fetishism, nature-worship, sun-worship--these are the constituents of
the primeval mud out of which has grown the splendid lily of religion. A
Krishna, a Buddha, a Lao-tze, a Jesus, are the highly civilised
but lineal descendants of the whirling medicine-man of the savage. God
is a composite photograph of the innumerable Gods who are the
personifications of the forces of nature. And so forth. It is all summed
up in the phrase: Religions are branches from a common trunk--human
ignorance.

The Comparative Religionists consider, o