f the same Father. But while these
general movements of the human mind may be acknowledged, the
education of the human race proceeds for the most part in nations. As
each nation has to elaborate its own art, its own literature, its own
system of law, so each nation has to perfect its own religion. Even
after a universal faith has appeared, religion does not cease to be a
national thing. Each people moulds the universal religion which it
has adopted into a special form, continues by means of it the rites
and traditions of the past, and expresses through it its own national
character and aspirations. Each nation as well as each individual
must necessarily have a faith specially its own, arising out of its
own character and experience and in great part incommunicable to
others. No two nations could possibly exchange religions.

But on the other hand every nation contains within itself forms of
religion which differ from each other as widely as those of two
separate nations. It has been said that no religious belief or usage
which has once lived can ever be destroyed; and the proof of this may
be witnessed in every nation. Even after that religion has come which
has its main seat in the heart and soul, the ruder forms of piety
live on, and even at times aggressively assert themselves. If there
are classes for whom the struggle against material hardships still
continues, no lofty religion can be attained by them any more than by
savage tribes. As the conditions of their life forbid the growth of
their higher faculties, their religion cannot be one of thought or of
refinement, but must be one which promises palpable benefits or an
escape from immediate dangers. At a somewhat higher stage is the
class of those who, while partly escaped from the struggle against
want, have not yet fully realised themselves as thinking and
spiritual beings, and to whom the benefits of religion still lie
outside, rather than in the inner life. When the benefits of religion
are thus conceived, its processes must be of a mechanical nature.
Hence the various systems of apparatus for connecting the worshipper
with a source of good distant from him in time or space, and for
fetching as it were from another region, with certainty and accuracy,
needed supplies of grace.

The further development of religion in a community so mixed must
depend on the progressive education and elevation of the people. As
more and more of them are freed first from distrac