e into greater evil. No doubt it may be justly
predicated of all these systems that they contain much which is false and
injurious to human virtue. But the following considerations may tend to
show that all the religions of the earth are providential, and that all
tend to benefit mankind.

To ascribe the vast phenomena of religion, in their variety and
complexity, to man as their author, and to suppose the whole a mere work
of human fraud, is not a satisfactory solution of the facts before us.
That priests, working on human ignorance or fear, should be able to build
up such a great mass of belief, sentiment, and action, is like the Hindoo
cosmogony, which supposes the globe to rest on an elephant, the elephant
on a turtle, and the turtle on nothing at all.

If the people were so ignorant, how happened the priests to be so wise? If
the people were so credulous, why were not the priests credulous too?
"Like people, like priests," is a proverb approved by experience. Among
so many nations and through so many centuries, why has not some one priest
betrayed the secret of the famous imposition? Apply a similar theory to
any other human institution, and how patent is its absurdity! Let a
republican contend that all other forms of government--the patriarchal
system, government by castes, the feudal system, absolute and limited
monarchies, oligarchies, and aristocracies--are wholly useless and evil,
and were the result of statecraft alone, with no root in human nature or
the needs of man. Let one maintain that every system of _law_ (except our
own) was an invention of lawyers for private ends. Let one argue in the
same way about medicine, and say that this is a pure system of quackery,
devised by physicians, in order to get a support out of the people for
doing nothing. We should at once reply that, though error and ignorance
may play a part in all these institutions, they cannot be based on error
and ignorance only. Nothing which has not in it some elements of use can
hold its position in the world during so long a time and over so wide a
range. It is only reasonable to say the same of heathen or ethnic
religions. They contain, no doubt, error and evil. No doubt priestcraft
has been carried very far in them, though not further perhaps than it has
sometimes been carried in Christianity. But unless they contained more of
good than evil, they could not have kept their place. They partially
satisfied a great hunger of the human hea