"[2-1] And as to the religions of heathendom, the view of
Saint Paul is but expressed with a more poetic turn by a distinguished
living author when he calls them "not fables, but truths, though clothed
in a garb woven by fancy, wherein the web is the notion of God, the
ideal of reason in the soul of man, the thought of the Infinite."[2-2]
Inspiration and science unite therefore to bid us dismiss the effete
prejudice that natural religions either arise as the ancient
philosophies taught, or that they are, as the Dark Ages imagined, subtle
nets of the devil spread to catch human souls. They are rather the
unaided attempts of man to find out God; they are the efforts of the
reason struggling to define the infinite; they are the expressions of
that "yearning after the gods" which the earliest of poets discerned in
the hearts of all men. Studied in this sense they are rich in teachings.
Would we estimate the intellectual and aesthetic culture of a people,
would we generalize the laws of progress, would we appreciate the
sublimity of Christianity, and read the seals of its authenticity: the
natural conceptions of divinity reveal them.
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