worship. Several writers, following in the wake of
Schleiermacher, who gave such a powerful impulse to the mind of Germany,
have made Religion to consist either in _a sense of dependence_, or in
_a consciousness of the infinite_; and this sentiment, as well as the
spontaneous intuitions of reason with which it is associated, is said to
be alike natural, universal, and invariable, the essential principle of
all Religion, the root whence have sprung all the various forms of
belief and worship. These varieties are supposed to be more or less
rational and salutary, according to the conception which they
respectively exhibit of the nature and character of God,--a conception
which may be endlessly diversified by the intellect, or the imagination,
or the passions of different men; while all the forms of belief are
radically identical, since they all spring from the same
ground-principle, and are only so many distinct manifestations of it.
Thus Mr. Parker tells us that, stripping the "religious sentiment" in
man "of all accidental circumstances peculiar to the age, nation, sect,
or individual, and pursuing a sharp and final analysis till the subject
and predicate can no longer be separated, we find as the ultimate fact,
that the religious sentiment is this,--'_a sense of dependence_.' This
sentiment does not itself disclose the character, and still less the
nature and essence, of the object on which it depends, no more than the
senses declare the nature of _their_ objects. Like them it acts
spontaneously and unconsciously, as soon as the outward occasion offers,
with no effort of will, forethought, or making up the mind. But the
religious sentiment implies its object; ... and there is but _one
religion_, though _many theologies_."[232]

There is, as it appears to us, a mixture of some truth with much grave
and dangerous error, in these and similar speculations. It is an
important truth, and one which has been too often overlooked in treating
the evidences of Natural Theology, that the _sentiments_ of the human
mind, not less than its intuitive perceptions or logical processes, have
a close relation to the subject of inquiry; but it is an error to
suppose that _all_ the sentiments having a religious tendency can be
reduced to _one_, whether it be called "a sense of dependence" or "a
consciousness of the infinite," for there are other sentiments besides
these which are equally subservient to the uses of Religion, such as the
sens