r, and in
Germany Schleiermacher, were brilliant exponents of this doctrine. To
the latter the philosopher Hegel replied that if religion is a matter of
feeling, an affectionate dog is the best Christian.

This answer was not flippant, but founded on the true and only worthy
conception of the religious sentiment. We have passed in review the
emotions which form a part of it, and recognize their power. But neither
these nor any other mere emotions, desires or feelings can explain even
the lowest religion. It depends for its existence on the essential
nature of reason. We cannot at all allow, as Dr. Mansel asks of us, that
man's first intimations of Deity came in any other way than as one of
the ripest fruits of reason. Were such the case, we should certainly
find traces of them among brutes and idiots, which we do not. The slight
signs of religious actions thought to have been noticed by some in the
lower animals, by Sir John Lubbock in ants, and by Charles Darwin in
dogs, if authenticated, would vindicate for these species a much closer
mental kinship to man than we have yet supposed.

If we dispassionately analyze any religion whatever, paying less
attention to what its professed teachers say it is, than to what the
mass of the votaries believe it to be, we shall see that every form of
adoration unconsciously assumes certain premises in reason, which give
impulse and character to its emotional and active manifestations. They
are its data or axioms, or, as I shall call them, its "rational
postulates." They can, I believe, be reduced to three, but not to a
lesser number.

Before the religious feeling acquires the distinctness of a notion and
urges to conscious action, it must assume at least these three
postulates, and without them it cannot rise into cognition. These, their
necessary character and their relations, I shall set forth in this
chapter.

They are as follows:--

I. There is Order in things.
II. This order is one of Intelligence.
III. All Intelligence is one in kind.

I. The conscious or unconscious purpose of the religious sentiment, as I
have shown in the last chapter, is the _fruition of a wish_, the success
of which depends upon unknown power. The votary asks help where he
cannot help himself. He expects it through an exertion of power, through
an efficient cause. Obviously therefore, he is acting on the logical
idea of Causality. This underlies and is essential to the simplest
prayer. He