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 THE

RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT ITSELF.

CHAPTER VII.

THE ULTIMATE ELEMENTS.

We have now examined and classified the various phenomena manifested by the religious sentiment throughout the world. We have found these phenomena to have been in all ages of history, and to be now among all races of men, fundamentally alike. Diverse as the several creeds existing on the face of the earth appear to a superficial observer, yet the rites, the practices, the dogmas they contain, admit of being ranged under certain definite categories and deduced from certain invariable assumptions. The two leading ideas of consecration and of sanctity pervade them all, and while the mode of consecration, the objects consecrated, the things, places, men, or books regarded as sacred, differ in every quarter of the globe, the feelings of the religious man remain the same.

Let us take a rapid survey, before proceeding further, of the ground we have already traversed. Wherever any religion exists at all, we have found consecrated actions: that is, actions devoted to the service of God. Such actions, it is assumed, have some kind of validity or force, either in bringing from the deities addressed by the worshipers some species of temporal blessing, or in ensuring happiness in a future state, or in im