tic society of gods, where there is as yet no
polytheism; nor an ideal first ancestor where men do not worship their
ancestors." To the substantiating of these facts Mr. Lang then applies
himself, and shows us how among the Australians, Red Indians, Figians,
Andamanese, Dinkas, Yao, Zulus, and all known savages there lives the
conception of a Supreme Being (not necessarily spirit) who is variously
styled Father, Master, Our Father, The Ancient One in the skyland, The
Great Father. He shows us, moreover, that this deity is the God of
conscience, a power making for goodness, a guardian and enforcer of the
interests of justice and truth and purity; good to the good, and froward
with the froward.

But surely, it will be said, all this is too paradoxical, too violently
in conflict with what is notorious concerning the religion and morality
of savages.

The reason of this seeming contradiction is, however, not altogether
difficult. It is to be found partly in the fact that religion, like
morality, being counter to those laws which govern the physical world
and the animal man,--to the law of egoism and competition and struggle
for existence; to the law that "might is right,"--tends from the very
nature of the case towards decay and disintegration. The movement of
material progress is in some sense a downhill movement. No doubt it
evokes much seeming virtue, such as is necessary to secure the end; but
the motive force is one with regard to which man is passive rather than
active, a slave rather than a master, as a miser is in respect to that
passion which stimulates him to struggle for gain. Religion and morality
are uphill work, needing continual strain and attention if the motive
force is to be maintained at all. Huxley, in one of his later
utterances, allowed this with regard to morality; and it is not less but
more true with regard to faith in the value of unseen realities. Even if
belief in a moral God be as natural to man as are the promptings of
conscience, it ought not to surprise us that it should be as universally
stifled, neglected, seemingly denied, as conscience is. It is not
usually in old age and after years of conflict with the world that
conscience is most sensitive and faithful to light, but rather in early
childhood. And similarly the sense of God and of His will is apparently
more strong and lively in the childhood of races than after it has been
stifled by the struggle for wealth and pre-eminence--

Wh