ent theism which still face each other in cultivated modern society could hardly be more sharply presented than in the two extracts which follow. Prof. Clifford, in language as startling as any in literature, expels the Creator from the universe, to fill the vacant throne with the creature, of whose imagination he conceives the Divine to have been the product :

"For, after all, such a helper of men, outside of humanity, the truth will not allow us to see. The dim and shadowy outlines of the superhuman deity fade slowly away from before us; and as the mist of his presence floats aside, we perceive with greater and greater clearness the shape of a yet grander and nobler figure-of Him who made all Gods, and shall unmake them. From the dim dawn of history, and from the inmost, depth of every soul, the face of our father Man looks out upon us, with the fire of eternal youth in his eyes, and says: 'Before Jehovah was, I am.""-["Lectures and Essays": London ed., 1879: Vol. 2: p. 243.

"The

On the other hand, are the noble words of James Martineau :universe gives us the scale of God, and Christ his spirit. We climb to the infinitude of his nature by the awful pathway of the stars, where whole forests of worlds silently quiver here and there, like a small leaf of light. We dive into his eternity, through the ocean waves of time, that roll and solemnly break on the imagination, as we trace the wrecks of departed things upon our present globe. The scope of his intellect, and the majesty of his rule, are seen in the tranquil order and everlasting silence that reign through the fields of his volition. And the spirit that animates the whole is like that of the Prophet of Nazareth; the thoughts that fly upon the swift light throughout creation, charged with fates unnumbered, are like the healing mercies of One who passed no sorrow by. . . A faith that spreads around and within the mind a Deity thus sublime and holy, feeds the life of every pure affection, and presses with omnipotent power on the conscience; and our only prayer is, that we may walk as children of such light!"-["Studies of Christianity": Boston ed., 1866: p. xx.

NOTES TO LECTURE III.

NOTE I.: PAGE 70.-"Buddha had known his own earlier existences. The tradition of the Singhalese ascribes to him 550 earlier lives, before he saw the light as the son of Çuddhodana. He had lived as a rat and a crow, as a frog and a hare, as a dog and a pig, twice as a fish, six times as a snipe, four times as a golden eagle, four times as a peacock and as a serpent, ten times as a goose, as a deer, and as a lion, six times as an elephant, four times as a horse and as a bull, eighteen times as an ape, four times as a slave, three times as a potter, thirteen times as a merchant, twenty-four times as a Brahman and as a prince, fifty-eight times as a king, twenty times as the god Indra, and four times as Mahabrahman. Buddha had not only known his own earlier existences, but those of all other living creatures; and this supernatural knowledge, this divine omniscience, was ascribed to those who after him attained the rank of Arhats."-[Duncker: "History of Antiquity"; London ed., 1880 Vol. 4: p. 487.

II. p. 70.-The "Discussion with Townley," from which these sentences are quoted, is not contained in the "Collected Writings" of Holyoake [2 vols.]: but the following, from his essay on "The Logic of Death," appear to bear the same significance:

"Man witnesses those near and dear to him perish before his eyes, and despite his supplications. He walks through no rose-water world, and no special Providence smooths his path. . . Man is weak, and a special Providence gives him no strength-distracted, and no counsel,ignorant, and no wisdom-in despair, and no consolation-in distress, and no relief-in darkness, and no light. The existence of God, therefore, whatever it may be in the hypotheses of philosophy, seems not recognizable in daily life. It is in vain to say, 'God governs by general laws.' General laws are inevitable fate. General laws are atheis tical. They say, practically, 'we are without God in the world-man, look to thyself: weak though thou mayest be, Nature is thy hope.' And even so it is. Would I escape the keen wind's blast, I seek shelter, from the yawning waves I look up, not to Heaven, but to naval architecture. In the fire-damp, Davy is more to me than the Deity of

creeds. All nature cries, with one voice, 'Science is the Providence o man.'"-[p. 7.

III. p. 71.-"And first as to their birth. Their ancestors [of the brave Athenian dead] were not strangers, nor are these their descendants sojourners only, whose fathers have come from another country; but they are the children of the soil, dwelling and living in their own land. And the country which brought them up is not like other countries, a step-mother to her children, but their own true mother she bore them, and nourished them, and received them, and in her bosom they now repose. . . At the time when the whole earth was sending forth and creating diverse animals, tame and wild, this our mother was free and pure from savage monsters, and out of all animals selected and brought forth man, who is superior to the rest in understanding, and who alone has justice and religion. And a great proof that she was the mother of us and of our ancestors, is that she provided the means of support for her offspring. . . And when she had herself nursed them, and brought them up to manhood, she gave them gods, to be their rulers and teachers."-[Plato: Menexenus: 237-8. Euripides, in the Ion, refers familiarly to the earth-born Athenian people,' who have risen to great renown. (29, 589, 737.)

"The Athenians were the first who laid aside arms, and adopted an easier and more luxurious way of life. Quite recently, the old-fashioned refinement of dress still lingered among the elder men of their richer class, who wore under-garments of linen, and bound back their hair in a knot, with golden clasps in the form of grasshoppers; and the same customs long survived among the elders of Ionia, having been derived from their Athenian ancestors."-[Thucydides: I.: 6.

IV.: p. 72.—"This plant, which by its nature should be akin to our common milk-weed, furnishes like the latter an abundant milky juice, which, when fermented, possesses intoxicating qualities. In this circumstance, it is believed, lies the explanation of the whole matter [of the Somaritual]. The simple-minded Aryan people, whose whole religion was a worship of the wonderful powers and phenomena of nature, had no sooner perceived that this liquid had power to elevate the spirits and produce a temporary frenzy, under the influence of which the individual was prompted to, and capable of, deeds beyond his natural powers, than they found in it something divine; it was to their apprehension a god, endowing those into whom it entered with godlike powers; the plant which afforded it became to them the king of plants; the process of preparing it was a holy sacrifice; the instruments used therefor were sacred. Soma is there addressed [in certain hymns of the Veda] as a god, in the highest strains of adulation and veneration; all powers be

long to him; all blessings are besought of him, as his to bestow."[Prof. W. D. Whitney: "Oriental and Linguistic Studies ": First Series; New York ed., 1872: pp. 10-11.

V.: p. 74.- "Every one will admit that a nature thus gifted, and having all the supposed conditions of the philosophic nature perfect, is a plant that rarely grows among men-there are not many of them."[Plato: "Republic": VI.: 491.

"It is clear, then, that some men are free by nature, and others are slaves; and that, in the case of the latter, the lot of slavery is both advantageous and just. It is evident that some persons are slaves, and others freemen, by the appointment of nature; and also that in some instances there are two distinct classes, for the one of whom it is expedient to be a slave, and for the other to be a master; and that it is right and just that some should be governed, and that others should exercise that government for which they are fitted by nature. . . A slave can have no deliberative faculty, a woman but a weak one, a child an imperfect one. . . A slave is one of those things which are by nature what they are."-[Aristotle: "Politics": I.: 5, 6, 13.

VI.: p. 74.—“If any habitation there be for the shades of the virtuous: if, as is supposed by philosophers, great souls are not extinguished with the body: may you [O Agricola] tranquilly there repose, and call us, your household, from weak regret and womanish lamentations to the contemplation of your virtues, which it is not permissible either to mourn for or bewail. Let us adorn thee with a true admiration, rather than with any fleeting praises, and, if nature will supply help, with our eager emulation."-[Tacitus: Agric. Vit.: XLVI.

VII.: p. 74.—“Since the Brâhman sprang from the most exalted part, since he was the first-born, since he possesses the Véda, he is by right the chief of the whole creation. Him, the Being who exists of himself, produced in the beginning from his own mouth: that, having performed holy rites, he might present clarified butter to the Gods, and cakes of rice to the progenitors of mankind, for the preservation of this world. What created being then can surpass Him, with whose mouth the Gods of the firmament continually feast on clarified butter, and the manes of ancestors on hallowed cakes?"-["Laws of Menu": chap. 1: 93-5: Works of Sir W. Jones; London ed., 1807: Vol. 7: p. 106.

"The Brahmans are nearest to Brahman: in them the essence of Brahman, the holy spirit, the power of sanctification, lives in greater force than in the rest; they emanated from Brahman before the others; they are the first-born order. Even though the theory of the

World-soul remained unintelligible to the many, they understood that the Brahmans, who busied themselves with sacrifice, prayers, and sacred things, stood nearer to the deity than they did; they under stood that if they misconducted themselves toward the sacred race, or disregarded the vocation of birth, they must expect endless torments in hell, and endless regenerations in the most loathsome worms and insects, or in the despised class of the Çudras-' those animals in hu man form.'"-[Duncker: "History of Antiquity"; London ed., 1880: Vol. 4: pp. 134, 142–3.

"Caste is not merely the symbol of Hinduism; but, according to the testimony of all who have studied it on the spot, it is its stronghold. It is this, much more than their creeds, which attaches the masses to these vague religions, and gives them such astonishing vitality."-[A. Barth: "Religions of India"; Boston ed., 1882: Preface, p. xvii.

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VIII. p. 75.- These souls [of gods, men, and animals] go forth from Brahman like sparks from a crackling fire-a metaphor common in the book of the law-they are of one essence with Brahman, and parts of the great World-soul. This soul is in the world, but also outside and above it: to it must everything return, for all that is not Brahman is impure, without foundation, and perishable. There is only one Being: this is the highest soul, and besides this there is noth ing; what seems to exist beyond this is mere illusion. . . Nature is nothing but the play of illusion, appearing in splendour, and then disappearing. . . The movement and action of living beings is not caused by the sparks of Brahman dwelling in them-for Brahman is consistently regarded as single and at rest-but by the bodies and senses, which, being of themselves appearance and deception, adopt and reflect the deception of Maya."-[Duncker: "History of Antiq uity"; London ed., 1880: Vol. 4: pp. 300–301.

IX.: p. 75.—“Here lay the secret of Buddha's success. He addressed himself to castes and outcasts. He promised salvation to all; and he commanded his disciples to preach his doctrine in all places and to all men. A sense of duty, extending from the narrow limits of the house, the village, and the country, to the widest circle of mankind, a feeling of sympathy and brotherhood towards all men; the idea, in fact, of humanity, was in India first pronounced by Buddha.. 'Nothing is stable on earth,' he used to say, 'nothing is real. Life is like the spark produced by the friction of wood. It is lighted, and is extinguished,- -we know not whence it came or whither it goes. It is like the sound of a lyre, and the wise man asks in vain from whence it came and whither it goes.' . . Difficult as it seems to us to conceive