e
power is invincible,--the All-seeing Jove, has some of the weaknesses
and passions of humanity. God and man are thus, in some mysterious way,
united. And here that deepest longing of the human heart is met--the
unconquerable desire to bring God nearer to the human apprehension, and
closer to the human heart. Hence the hold which Polytheism had upon the
Grecian mind. But in this human aspect was also found its weakness, for
when philosophic thought is brought into contact with, and permitted
critically to test mythology, it dethrones the false gods. The age of
spontaneous religious sentiment must necessarily be succeeded by the age
of reflective thought. Popular theological faiths must be placed in the
hot crucible of dialectic analysis, that the false and the frivolous may
be separated from the pure and the true. The reason of man demands to be
satisfied, as well as the heart. Faith in God must have a logical basis,
it must be grounded on demonstration and proof. Or, at any rate, the
question must be answered, _whether God is cognizable by human reason_?
If this can be achieved, then a deeper foundation is laid in the mind of
humanity, upon which Christianity can rear its higher and nobler truths.

CHAPTER V.

THE UNKNOWN GOD.

"As I passed by, and beheld your sacred objects, I found an altar with
this inscription, _To the Unknown God_."--ST. PAUL.

"That which can be _known_ of God is manifested in their hearts, God
himself having shown it to them" [the heathen nations].--ST. PAUL.

Having now reached our first landing-place, from whence we may survey
the fields that we have traversed, it may be well to set down in
definite propositions the results we have attained. We may then carry
them forward, as torches, to illuminate the path of future and still
profounder inquiries.

The principles we have assumed as the only adequate and legitimate
interpretation of the facts of religious history, and which an extended
study of the most fully-developed religious system of the ancient world
confirms, may be thus announced:

I. A religious nature and destination appertain to man, so that the
purposes of his existence and the perfection of his being can only be
secured in and through religion.

II. The idea of God as the unconditioned Cause, the infinite Mind, the
personal Lord and Lawgiver, and the consciousness of dependence upon and
obligation to God, are the fundamental principles of all religion.

III. In