none. If not restored to its source, it must finally perish. To be pure, peaceful, happy, each of us must find God, and in God attain the true and the holy; and thus drinking the beams of the eternal Sun, revolve around him in glory and in joy forever.

Thus, in all ages, we find lofty souls, even in darkness and sorrow, "feeling after God." Thales, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Cicero, Plutarch catch a glimpse of his glory, and proclaim, with exultation, the stupendous thought. Somewhat bewildered, and with only partial views, they yet reach towards the Divine as their centre and their end. Nay, the poor African, in a deeper night, feels the mighty fascination, without knowing what it is. Said Sekesa, a native of Southern Africa, of the Bechuana tribe, to a missionary from whom he had been hearing of God and immortality, "Your views, O white man, are just what I wanted and sought for before I knew you. Twelve years ago, I went, in a cloudy season, to feed my flock along the Tlotse, among the Malutis. Seated upon a rock in sight of my sheep, I asked myself sad questions; yes, sad, because I could not answer them. The stars, said I, who touched them with his hand? On what pillars do they rest? The waters are not weary; they run without ceasing at night and morning alike;

but where do they stop, or who makes them run thus? The clouds also go, return, and fall in water to the earth. Whence do they arise? Who sends them? It surely is not the Barokas (rain makers) who give us the rain, for how could they make it? The wind what is it? Who brings it or takes it away? makes it blow, and roar, and frighten us? Do I know how the corn grows? Yesterday there was not a blade to be seen in my field. To-day I return and find something. It is very small; I can scarcely see it; but it will grow up like a young man. Who can have given the ground wisdom and power to produce it? Then I buried my head in my hands.

"Again I thought within myself, and I said, We all depart, but this country remains; it alone remains, for we all go away. But whither do we go? My heart answered, Perhaps other men live besides us, and we shall go to them. But another thought arose against it, and said, Those men under the earth, whence come they? Then my heart did not know what more to think. It wondered. Then my heart rose and spoke to me, saying, All men do much evil, and thou, thou also hast done much evil. Woe to thee! I recalled many wrongs which I had done, and because of this my conscience gnawed me in secret, as I sat alone on the rock. I say

I was afraid. I got up and ran after my sheep, trying to enliven myself, but I trembled much."

Moffat informs us that some of the tribes of Africa are so degraded as, apparently, to have no idea of a supreme power; but this is the exception, not the rule. As intelligence and civilization advance, the idea of "the Divine" becomes, in all countries, more distinct and luminous. It rises with science and virtue, appropriates to itself all beautiful forms, and "sits enthroned on the riches of the universe."

It is owing to the depth and permanence of this original instinct or intuition, blind as it occasionally seems, and much perverted by ig

*Further investigations show decisively that the exception scarcely exists, even among the most superstitious tribes of Africa; the word Morimo, which means the Supreme Spirit, is found as a relic of some better knowledge now lost. Mr. Livingston says that the recently-discovered tribes in the interior of Africa have an idea of a supreme God. This is corroborated by Mr. Bowen, who says the people in Yarouba believe in one God, though the national worship is directed to inferior deities, both benign and malignant. They speak of him as "over all," and call him "the Owner of heaven." Their language contains those terms which enable the missionary to speak to them intelligently of the Deity, of sin, guilt, moral obligation, &c. Some of their traditions would indicate an Oriental origin. Every where the ark is an object of reverence. Mr. Tanner, a half-breed Indian missionary, well acquainted with the Indians, says that those tribes who have been secluded from intercourse with the whites have a distinct idea of a supreme Spirit. They worship other spirits, but especially venerate the Great Spirit, and recognize the eternal distinction of right and wrong, with the doctrine of reward and punishment. This is corroborated by Mr. Catlin and Mr. Schoolcraft.

norance and lust, that the race, as such, especially in its more active centres, has always occupied itself with the problem of God, or the gods, those supreme and eternal powers supposed to preside over the universe, and has always organized itself, as we have said, around some fundamental belief in reference to duty and destiny. Thus Plato over and over again affirms that a belief in God, or the gods, is a natural and universal instinct.* "Examine," says Plutarch, in his tract against Coletes, the Epicurean, "the face of the earth, and you may find cities unfortified, unlettered, without a regular magistrate or distinct habitations, without possessions, property, or the use of money, and unskilled in all the magnificent and polished arts of life; but a city without the knowledge of God or religion, without the use of vows, oaths, oracles, and sacrifices to procure good, or of deprecatory rites to avert evil, no man can or ever will find." So also in his Consolatio ad Apollonium, he declares, "it was so ancient an opinion that good men should be recompensed

See especially De Legibus, (lib. x.,) Contra Atheos. Plato, indeed, sees clearly enough that the instinct referred to is often feeble, as well as subject to great perversion. In himself, it was not entirely free from superstition; yet who, with the slightest knowledge of his works, will deny the strength and grandeur with which it developed itself in his sublime speculations on the true, the beautiful, and the good, as eternal entities in the bosom of God?

at death, that he could not reach either the author or the origin of it." In his Tusculan Questions, Cicero bears the same testimony. "As our innate ideas," he says, "discover to us that there are gods, [or a God; for Cicero often uses the term gods, when he means simply God,] whose attributes we deduce from reason, so, from the consent of all nations and people, we conclude that the soul is immortal." In another place, he affirms that this, as well as the sense of justice, must be " a law of nature."

Errors and superstitions of course mingled with ancient myths and traditions; but they were based upon an original intuition, if not an original revelation. In corroboration of this view we find Aristotle averring that "it was an ancient saying, received by all from their ancestors, that all things exist by and through the power of God, . . who, being one, (els,) was known by many names, according to his modes of manifestation" a testimony as striking as it is profound.t

* Tus. Disp. i. 30. "Omnis autem in re consensio omnium gentium lex naturæ putanda est." Compare De Natura Deorum, i. 43, as also lib. ii. 12. Cicero, being an Academic, often presents his opinions in the form of doubts; but his real sentiments were unquestionably favorable to the doctrine of God and the immortality of the soul. How striking, for example, is the following: "Esse præstantem aliquam æternamque naturam, et eam suspiciendam admirandamque hominum generi, pulchritudo mundi ordoque rerum cœlestium cogit confiteri."- De Divin. lib. ii.

+ See De Mundo, c. 6, 7. A similar passage is referred to by Ne