But it is not of course to be disguised that the history of the remote past does present us with many difficulties. I do not think I have generally been paradoxical; but it may be proper to mention where I have most diverged from the conclusions arrived at by previous writers. I have ventured to put the date of Zoroaster in the first half of the sixth century before Christ, believing that the Magi had had a creditable career of considerable length before he appeared among them, and that their less worthy characteristics in after times were in no wise chargeable to Zoroaster, but were the result of their unsuccessful revolt against the Persians in the time of Darius-a calamity which they had not the strength to endure without loss of rectitude.

Another point in which I do not stand alone, but in which still the common opinion is against me, is my belief that Zerubbabel lived, not under Cyrus and Darius Hystaspes, but under Darius Nothus, a century later than is usually supposed. The effect of this alteration of historical view is very much to raise the character of the Jews of the fifth century before Christ, who on this showing had to surmount difficulties far more serious than is usually conceived in obtaining their restoration to their own country, and who did surmount those difficulties with extraordinary patience, fidelity, and resolution. But I must refer to my fourteenth chapter, and to the first appendix to that chapter, for the reasons for this opinion.

It is not quite the same sort of difference from ordinary opinion, but I may note it here, that I hold the Christian Church of the fourth century after Christ to have had a greater share of responsibility for the fall of the western empire than is generally believed; at the same time I think it was want of experience more than moral error which misled the Church authorities of that time; so that it does not tell vitally against them.

In my first chapter I have expressed the opinion that organisation, which so powerfully assists human action, has also had a share in the evolution of sun and stars. This is an opinion which does not admit of speedy verification; but if organisation were found, not merely to increase human power on the earth, but also to increase the natural powers of the earth itself, to make it permanently more fruitful, more filled with living agencies (and living agencies that work harmoniously together), we should have ground for expecting a still greater development of terrestrial energy as time goes on; and it is impossible to set limits to such an advance. If mankind could peacefully unite for a

few centuries, we should know better than we do now what is the power of organisation in raising the whole condition of our earthly habitation; and it is fervently to be hoped that this experience may be won by mankind. The present treatise endeavours to show that such a hope is justified by our knowledge of the power which resides in religion.

This is, I think, all that I need say in regard to special points mentioned in the present work; but there are some more observations that I must make.

The anthropologists, I know, have added much to our knowledge of the curious habits and superstitious fears which have accompanied the evolution of religion; but the true evolution of religion is that which takes place by the divine enlargement of the spirit of man; and my present belief is that the anthropologists have not added much to our knowledge of this. If I am shown to be wrong, I will gladly confess my error.

Metaphysical philosophy is capable of being a great support to religion, and I can by no means think of it as an unfruitful subject, though a very difficult one it certainly is. The philosophy which Socrates began, and Plato continued, was the first attempt to show the importance of the mental element in experience; and they were right in connecting it with religion; but detailed clearness of view was not to be expected at that stage of the world's history. Indeed for long afterwards, though ethics advanced, metaphysical philosophy remained as a kind of vision, in which the divine nature was the culminating point, and man was somehow transcendentally connected with this divinity. Kant was the first to show that these beliefs as to God and man are not proved by such arguments as had been offered on their behalf from various quarters; at the same time he did not deny the value of the beliefs; and in practice he held that God, human freedom, and immortal life were guiding conceptions for mankind. To practical life then, the proof of these doctrines was committed; and if the view of history given in the present treatise be correct, practical life confirms them. The embracing of great conceptions because they are necessary, and proved to be necessary, for our practical guidance—that is, I think, the central character of true philosophy; and Kant was the person who first distinctly led men to this kind of view. However, philosophy radiates from this centre into all manner of inquiries and subjects of thought; and there is just a little more that I should like to say of it in this place.

First, those philosophers who are called idealists, who have insisted that matter is an unmeaning word unless mind is assumed as well-that matter acquires its definite character through the percipient mind, and would be vague unless it were regarded as somehow perceived these philosophers are not easily refuted; though in our ordinary life we seem to disregard them, and to treat matter and mind as separate things. Berkeley in England, perhaps Malebranche in France, and Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel in Germany, are the most famous of these philosophers; but the most cardinal proposition of all idealism appears to me best expressed by a Scotch philosopher of the middle of the nineteenth century, James Frederick Ferrier. He said that our personal self is known to us as the universal element in all our knowledge; that it cannot be thought of as a particular thing among other things. It is true that in the spiritual world our self is regarded as a self among other selves; but in the world of our sensuous perception this is not so; in that external world our self is a universal element, present in every perception of ours. I am not quoting Ferrier's words, but I am sure I am giving his meaning rightly, as expressed in his Institutes of Metaphysic; and it appears to me that he expresses both a true plain fact, and also a true mystery in which that plain fact is involved. We cannot escape the region of mystery even in our most commonplace thoughts, nor can we desire to escape it, for in mystery lies the seed of progress. It is evident how entirely this kind of view fits in with the religious temperament, and sanctions it on the intellectual side.

The same result is enforced on us by another consideration, which biological science makes absolutely clear. Our senses, or in other words the faculties by which we apprehend the external world, are growths, just as much as a tree is a growth; they began, ages ago, with a very small power of discernment; they have increased in power until sight and hearing have become able to discriminate in a truly marvellous degree. But is it reasonable to suppose that we have come to an end of this growing process? Will not new methods of perception rise up in the generations to come? May we not hope, and even expect, that the souls of the departed, who are still joined to us by love, will be known by us in due time with a knowledge that we shall recognise as genuine and unquestionable? I think we may expect this.

Of the authorities referred to in this book, there are three,

not mentioned as often as might be expected by English or Scottish theologians, but looked upon by myself with much admiration, and therefore proper to be mentioned here. One is the Acta Conciliorum, published in Paris early in the eighteenth century by Harduin and his fellow Jesuits. This work is invaluable for anyone who wishes to understand the medieval Church. Another is the Church History of Neander; a work clumsy, it is true, in its structure, but so serene, impartial, and large in its knowledge, that every thoughtful religious inquirer must be the better for reading it, especially the later volumes of it. The third authority, or perhaps I should rather say set of authorities, is that great series Sacred Books of the East, edited by the late Professor Max Müller, and written by learned and able men of many nations; the most enlightening set of works on the Asiatic religions which has ever been published in England.

A few more books, for different reasons, I must mention here. Our greatest English historian, Gibbon, is so necessary to every one who undertakes to say or write anything about the latter days of imperial Rome, that to name him is sufficient. At the time when I wrote the twenty-third chapter of the present work, I had not read Mr F. Warre-Cornish's book on Chivalry; else I should have borrowed some of the descriptive touches given in that interesting account of the most picturesque side of mediæval life. Lastly, I must not leave unrecognised, in relation to the question of miracles, what is I suppose the best defence of the New Testament miracles written in England in the nineteenth century, the Bampton Lectures for 1865, by my uncle, Dr James Bowling Mozley, who shortly afterwards became Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford. It is a work full of acute and valuable remarks, but it does not include any critical examination of the gospel evidence, which is not, I think, at all as strong, when properly weighed, as it is assumed to be in those Lectures; also the characteristic results of Christian doctrine are assumed to be altogether good, whereas the action of the Christian Church in the middle ages was often of a very questionable kind indeed, and the primâ facie (and I think the correct) view is that this was not unconnected with Christian doctrine. If the greater power wielded by the human race, from its European centre, in modern times as compared with antiquity, be drawn from the strength of the Christian religion, as I think is the case (and I have argued in this sense in the present work)—if the greater respect paid to women, and greater mildness in general behaviour, be due to the

same cause-must not the fantastic asceticism, the repression of the intellect, the persecution of Jews and heretics, which for so many centuries were ordinary forms of Christian action, be reckoned as indicating some fault in Christian doctrine? To recover from errors, is a power inherent in the Christian Church; but to deny the errors of the past, is impossible; and the natural inferences to be drawn from those errors must not be shirked.

One more literary production, and a very recent one, I must now mention. In the Observer newspaper for January 30, February 6, and February 13 of the present year are three articles by that eminent physicist, Sir Oliver Lodge, so similar in their purport to the view advanced in the first chapter of this treatise (and expanded at the close of the twenty-seventh chapter) that I cannot avoid speaking of them here. The gist of them is that life is the restorative element in the universe. Here is the paragraph in which this thesis is summarised (a paragraph prefixed to each of the three articles mentioned above):

"It has been assumed from a physical point of view that the universe must come to an end, unless it receives a new impulse of creation, such as it must have had at its beginning. Every mathematical thinker during the last century has held that cosmic energy must decay by dissipation of heat-that the whole clock of things, as it were, must come to the stillness of an everlasting death. This is the greatest and most mysterious of all the themes of pessimism. Sir Oliver Lodge seeks escape from the physical aspect of the problem, and suggests that it may be found in the nature of life."

In the articles themselves, the following is the central proposition which elucidates the whole: after saying that "Life is definitely not a form of energy," Sir Oliver Lodge adds, "Life certainly guides or directs energy; that is its physical function; and I see no reason against some form of life being able to direct energy uphill, so to speak, instead of being only able to utilise energy while in process of falling down." A luminous sentence; but I venture to add that this guiding function of life is impossible, unless we take into account Herbert Spencer's theory of an Infinite and Eternal Energy beyond our senses, which streams into the world surveyed by our senses. For the actual point of the guidance of material energy by the living agency lies in a region unknown to us. Hence I have placed this theory of Herbert Spencer at the foundation of the whole view, and without