Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/210

 themselves as true, what many of them have perceived to be the truth by means of thought, and what all feel and believe to be the truth. If, to start with, we leave out of account the force of such a proof, and look at the dry substance of it which is supposed to rest on an empirical and historical basis, it will be seen to be both uncertain and vague. All that about all nations, all men who are supposed to believe in God, is on a level with similar appeals to all generally; they are usually made in a very thoughtless fashion. A statement, which is necessarily an empirical statement, is made regarding all men, and which covers all individuals, and consequently all times and places; future ones, too, if strictly taken, for we are supposed to be dealing with all men. But it is not possible to get historical evidence regarding all nations. Such statements regarding all men are in themselves absurd, and are to be explained only by the habit people have of not treating seriously such meaningless and trite ways of speaking. But apart from this, nations, or if you choose to call them tribes, have been discovered, whose dull minds, being limited to the few objects connected with their outward needs, had not risen to a consciousness of anything higher which might be called God. What is supposed to be the historical element in the religion of many peoples rests principally on uncertain explanations of sensuous expressions, outward actions, and the like. Of a great many nations, even such as are otherwise highly civilised, and with whose religion we have a more definite and thorough acquaintance, it may be said that what they call God is of such a character that we may well hesitate to recognise it as God. A dispute of the most bitter kind has been carried on between two Roman Catholic monastic orders as to whether the names Thian and Chang-ti, which occur in the Chinese State-religion, the former meaning heaven, and the latter lord, might be used to designate the Christian God, that is to say, as to whether these