to their perfect form. Unless
they had formed part of the original dowry of the human soul, religion
itself would have remained an impossibility, and the tongues of
angels would have been to human ears but as sounding brass or a
tinkling cymbal. If we once understand this clearly, the words of St.
Augustine which have seemed startling to many of his admirers, become
perfectly clear and intelligible, when he says:[1] 'What is now called
the Christian religion, has existed among the ancients, and was not
absent from the beginning of the human race, until Christ came in the
flesh: from which time the true religion, which existed already, began
to be called Christian.' From this point of view the words of Christ
too, which startled the Jews, assume their true meaning, when He said
to the centurion of Capernaum: 'Many shall come from the east and the
west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the
kingdom of heaven.'

[Footnote 1: August. Retr. 1, 13. 'Res ipsa, quae nunc religio
Christiana nuncupatur, erat apud antiquos, nec defuit ab initio
generis humani, quousque Christus veniret in carnem, unde vera
religio, quae jam erat, coepit appellari Christiana.']

During the last fifty years the accumulation of new and authentic
materials for the study of the religions of the world, has been most
extraordinary; but such are the difficulties in mastering these
materials that I doubt whether the time has yet come for attempting to
trace, after the model of the Science of Language, the definite
outlines of the Science of Religion. By a succession of the most
fortunate circumstances, the canonical books of three of the
principal religions of the ancient world have lately been recovered,
the Veda, the Zend-Avesta, and the Tripi_t_aka. But not only have we
thus gained access to the most authentic documents from which to study
the ancient religion of the Brahmans, the Zoroastrians, and the
Buddhists, but by discovering the real origin of Greek, Roman, and
likewise of Teutonic, Slavonic, and Celtic mythology, it has become
possible to separate the truly religious elements in the sacred
traditions of these nations from the mythological crust by which they
are surrounded, and thus to gain a clearer insight into the real faith
of the ancient Aryan world.

If we turn to the Semitic world, we find that although no new
materials have been discovered from which to study the ancient
religion of the Jews, yet a new spirit