over
him, nor will its miracles, any more than its doctrines, be
received on the ground of their being in the book. Thus a direct
and independent discernment of the great truths of moral Theism is a
postulate, to be proved or conceded _before_ the Christian can begin
the argument in favour of Biblical preternaturalism. I had thought
it would have been avowed and maintained with a generous pride, that
eminently in Christian literature we find the noblest, soundest, and
fullest advocacy of moral Theism, as having its evidence in the heart
of man within and nature without, _independently of any postulates
concerning the Bible_. I certainly grew up for thirty years in that
belief. Treatises on Natural Theology, which (with whatever success)
endeavoured to trace--not only a constructive God in the outer world,
but also a good God when that world is viewed in connexion with man;
were among the text-books of our clergy and of our universities, and
were in many ways crowned with honour. Bampton Lectures, Bridgewater
Treatises, Burnet Prize Essays, have (at least till very recently in
one case) been all, I rather think, in the same direction. And surely
with excellent reason. To avow that the doctrines of Moral Theism have
no foundation to one who sees nothing preternatural in the Bible, is
in a Christian such a suicidal absurdity, that whenever an atheist
advances it, it is met with indignant denial and contempt.

The argumentative strength of this Appendix, as a reply to those
who call themselves "orthodox" Christians, is immensely increased by
analysing their subsidiary doctrines, which pretend to relieve,
while they prodigiously aggravate, the previous difficulties of Moral
Theism; I mean the doctrine of the fall of man by the agency of a
devil, and the eternal hell. But every man who dares to think will
easily work out such thoughts for himself.

APPENDIX II.

I here reproduce (merely that it may not be pretended that I silently
withdraw it) the substance of an illustration which I offered in my
2nd edition, p. 184.

When I deny that History can be Religion or a part of Religion, I
mean it exactly in the same sense, in which we say that history is not
mathematics, though mathematics has a history. Religion undoubtedly
comes to us by historical transmission: it has had a slow growth; but
so is it with mathematics, so is it with all other sciences. (I refer
to mathematics, not as peculiarly like to religion, but