orld, and correlate and bind him fast
to an invisible, but real God. The more his mind is disciplined by
abstract thought, the clearer do these necessary and universal
principles become, and the purer and more spiritual his ideas of God.
God is now for him the First Principle of all principles, the First
Truth of all truths; the Eternal Reason, the Immutable Righteousness,
the Supreme Good. The normal and healthy development of reason, the
maturity of thought, conduct to the recognition of the true God.

And so it has been in the universal consciousness of our race as
revealed in history. There was first a period of spontaneous and
unreflective Theism, in which man felt the consciousness of God, but
could not or did not attempt a rational explanation of his instinctive
faith. He saw God in clouds and heard Him in the wind. His smile
nourished the corn, and cheered the vine. The lightnings were the
flashes of his vengeful ire, and the thunder was his angry voice. But
the unity of God was feebly grasped, the rays of the Divinity seemed
divided and scattered amidst the separate manifestations of power, and
wisdom, and goodness, and retribution, which nature presented. Then
plastic art, to aid and impress the imagination, created its symbols of
these separate powers and principles, chiefly in human form, and gods
were multiplied. But all this polytheism still rested on a dim
monotheistic background, and all the gods were subordinated to
Zeus--"the Father of gods and men." Humanity had still the sense of the
dependence of all finite being on one great fountain-head of
Intelligence and Power, and all the "generated gods" were the subjects
and ministers of that One Supreme. This was the childhood of humanity so
vividly represented in Homeric poetry.

Then came a period of incipient reflection, and speculative thought, in
which the attention of man is drawn outward to the study of nature, of
which he can yet only recognize himself as an integral part. He searches
for some arche--some first principle, appreciable to sense, which in its
evolution shall furnish an explanation of the problem of existence. He
tries the hypothesis of "_water_" then of "_air_" then of "_fire_" as
the primal element, which either is itself, or in some way infolds
within itself an informing Soul, and out of which, by vital
transformation, all things else are produced. But here he failed to find
an adequate explanation; his reason was not satisfied. The