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338 entertained. It will suffice if I take the conceptions which have arisen in races that have entertained the system of religious beliefs Mr. Balfour defends. Without dwelling on the contrasts between the conceptions of God current in early Hebrew times and those current in later Hebrew times, and without dwelling on the contrasts between the highly anthropomorphic ideas which prevailed in mediæval days throughout Europe and those less anthropomorphic ones which prevail in our days, it will suffice to name, side by side, the diverse conceptions existing among ourselves at present. There is the conceived divine character which most Protestants and all Catholics imply by the belief in an eternal hell; and there is that widely different one implied in the followers of Maurice, who reject that belief. There are the views of Trinitarians and Unitarians, so definitely unlike; and there are two other widely unlike views—that of the Quakers, and that of their fellow Christians who laugh at them for believing that the Christian ideal must be conformed to. Now, if from the "depths of unfathomable mystery" the conception of "a rational Author" of "the ordered system of phenomena" has emerged into human consciousness, there arises in the first place the question—How come there to have so emerged the different conceptions which men have entertained from early days when God was said to have appeared to various persons, down to our late days when theophany is nonsense? Then, seeing that many of these conceptions are in direct antagonism, there arises the question—How are we to decide which must be rejected? And once more, if out of all of them one only has truly emerged, in what manner shall we identify it? To all which unanswerable inquiries add one more. Assuming that the conception of "a rational Author," as existing in Mr. Balfour and those who are on the same high plane of thought, is the only true one, then, if possession of this conception is to be shown, it is requisite that there should be specified some mentally-representable traits which constitute it. And if the asserted traits are unrepresentable—if being, as they must be, abstractions of human attributes existing unlocalized and multiplied by infinity, they are unthinkable—then the assertion of their existence becomes nothing but the blank form of a thought—expresses a pseud-idea.

A kindred result is reached if, not content with the word "emerges," we try to imagine a process answering to that word. The word implies some medium out of which some existence previously concealed gradually appears—at first vaguely and at last distinctly. Can Mr. Balfour say that, apart from any impressions given to him in the course of education and subsequent culture, such a representable emergence has taken place in him? If so, one implication is that his mind differs, not in elevation