the moral
consciousness as containing truth or implying it, when rightly
understood. Truth indeed of the highest import for morality is implied
in the distinctions thus essayed to be drawn. But before the truth
implicit could be made explicit, it was necessary that the distinctions
should be recognised to have their basis in religion. And that was
impossible where religion was at its lowest or in its least developed
form.

From the fact that on the one hand the conception of a future life in
another world, when it arose amongst people in a low stage of religious
development, bore but little moral and no religious fruit; and on the
other, where it did yield fruit, there had been a previous period when
religion closed its eyes as far as possible to the condition of the
dead {58} in Hades or in Sheol,--we may draw the inference that the
conception of the future state formed by such people, as "the rude
Tupinambas of Brazil" had to be sterilised, so to speak,--to be
purified from associations dangerous both to morality and religion. We
may fairly say that as a matter of fact that was the consequence which
actually happened, and that both in Greece and Judaea the prospect of a
future life at one time became practically a _tabula rasa_ on which
might be written a fairer message of hope than had ever been given
before. In Greece the message was written, indeed, and was received
with hope by the thousands who joined in the celebration of the
mysteries. But the characters in which it was written faded soon. The
message was found to reveal nothing. It revealed nothing because it
demanded nothing. It demanded neither a higher life nor a higher
conception of the deity. It did not set forth a new and nobler
morality; and it accommodated itself to the existing polytheism. What
it did do was to familiarise the Hellenic world with the conviction
that there was a life hereafter, better than this life; and that the
condition of its attainment was communion with the true God,
peradventure He could be found. It was by this {59} conviction and
this expectation that the ground was prepared, wherever Hellenism
existed, for the message that was to come from Israel.

From the beginning, or let us say in the lowest forms in which religion
manifests itself, religion is the bond in which the worshippers are
united with one another and with their God. The community which is
thus united is at first the earliest form of society, whatev