e of moral obligation, of the true, of the ideal, of the sublime,
and of the beautiful. It is also an important truth, that there are
spontaneous "intuitions of reason," or fundamental and invariable "laws
of thought," which come into action at the first dawn of experience, and
which have a close connection with the proof of the being and
perfections of God; but it is an error to suppose that the proof depends
_exclusively_ on these, or that it could be made out irrespective of the
evidence afforded by the works of Creation and Providence. It is further
an important truth, that the religious sentiment, or religious tendency,
is natural to man, and that it may appear either in the form of Religion
or Superstition: but it is an error to suppose that "there is but _one
religion_, although _many theologies_;" for these theologies must spring
from fundamentally different "conceptions of God," and what are these
conceptions, in their ultimate analysis, but so many beliefs, doctrines,
or dogmas, which, whether formally defined or not in articles of faith,
have in them the self-same essence which is supposed to belong only to
the bigotry of "articled churches?" But the fundamental, the fatal error
of all these speculations, is the denial of any _stable and permanent
standard of objective truth_. Truth is made purely _subjective_, and, of
course, it must also be progressive, insomuch that the truth of a former
age may be an error in the present, and the supposed truth of the
present age may become obsolete hereafter. So that there is really
nothing certain in human knowledge; and "truth" may be justly described
as never existing, but only _becoming_, as never possessed, though ever
pursued; it is a _verite mobile_, a truth not in _esse_, but in _fieri_.
Hence we read in recent speculations of a "new Christianity," of a "new
Gospel," and of "the Church of the Future," as if there could be any
other Christianity than that of the New Testament, any other Gospel than
that of Jesus Christ, or any other Church than that of apostolic times.

I have adverted to this theory, because, while it is of little value in
a speculative point of view, it is often found to exert a powerful
practical influence, especially on "men of affairs," men who have
travelled in various countries, or who have been employed in the arts of
diplomacy and government; and who, finding religious worship everywhere,
but clothed in different forms, and marking its subs