On Saturday, Feb. 26th, Professor Max Müller delivered his second lecture on the same subject. The auditory, as before, was a very large one. Prince Christian presided, and among the listeners were H.R.H. the Princess of Wales, the Princess Louise, the Queen of Holland, General Sir William Knollys, and the Countess of Macclesfield. The lecturer began by speaking of the four great book-religions of the world—Christianity, Mosaism, Mahometanism, Brahminism the religion of the Zend Avesta, Buddhism, and the reli gions of Confucius and Laotse. The religion of Fo, in China, is nothing but a corruption of Buddhism; the latter religion, in fact, covers the greater part of the habitable globe. He then spoke of the religions of Africa with their strange worship of snakes and ancestors, and vague ideas of one God, the father of the black as well as of the white. Among the Polynesians there are whisperings about one Divine being, and there are ideas of a future life. After speaking of the religions of the American Indians, he remarked that the vast panorama of religions offers a rich field for investigation by the student, who is puzzled where to begin his work. Nothing much can be done until the religions are classified, and then each scholar can go on with his own branch of the work. It may be thought that the simplest classification is the division into “true and false religions,” but that would be like dividing earthly languages into “one’s own language, and the languages of all the rest of the world." (Laughter and applause.) Such a classification is useless for scientific pur poses. Another classification, quite as worthless, is their division into “ revealed and natural religions." With us, all religions but Christianity would then be classed as “natural," and a scientific Buddhist could not accept the definition. Many philosophers of the last century, after examining differ ent religions, found that there were certain principles which all of them shared in common; moreover, when all that seemed miraculous and irrational was taken from the New Testament, this natural religion remained behind. These investigators however, soon found out that no philosophy could take the place of religious faith. The divisions of religions into re vealed and natural religions, would be useless, because then our science would be denied by all but Jews and Christians. Buddha himself, in his teachings, appealed only to the light within him, but his followers claim for him enormous powers. His earliest pupils called him “omniscient,” but as he made mistakes about the shape of the earth and the movements of the heavenly bodies, modern Buddhist theologians limit his omniscience to the articles of his faith, and in these he is declared to be infallible. This is very much to the credit of the candour of the theologians. When the founders of nearly all tle religions of the world claim some revelation as the foundation of their teachings, it is clear that the classification of religions into “revealed and natural” will not do for scien tific purposes. Besides, if we granted that Christianity and Judaism were the only revealed religions, they would also be natural religions, for no religion can be entirely separated from natural religion without destruction. Natural religion sup plies the only ground upon which revealed religion can stand, and without this support revealed religion is degraded into a creed which unreasoning people must be made to accept, igno rantly and without questioning. When Joshua tried to re claim the backsliding Jews, he set before them the claims of the gods of other nations and of their former god and religion and closed by asking them to choose that day the God whom they would serve. Man, therefore, possesses a power of choosing, based upon natural faith, and this power he has the right to exercise. Another suggestion might be that religions should be divided into three classes—monotheistic, dualistic, and poly theistic. This would be useful in some respects, as there would be an agreement in the number of the deities, but in other respects it would be an incongruous mixture. Besides, it would exclude some religions—Atheism for instance. His hearers might be surprised at his calling Atheism a religion. but it is a fact that the religion of Buddha was from the first purely Atheistic, and taught the highest morality long before the advent of Christianity ; it did not even erect an altar “to the Unknown God." On Saturday, March 5th, Professor Max Müller delivered his third lecture on the “Science of Religion" Prince Christian presided, and among the listeners present were the Deanof Westminster, Professor Tyndall, Mr. C. F. Varley, C. E. Sir Henry Rawlinson, K.C.B., Mr. J. P. Gassiott, F. R. S., and Sir Henry Holland, Bart., F.R.S., President of the Royal Institution. Professor Max Müller said that upon surveying the religions of the world without prejudice, it is possible to see that they are separated by strongly marked divisions. In old times there was a stronger relation between religion and nationality than there was between language and nationality. In those early times the religions were very simple, and confined to a few words, including the name of the Deity, and also of His attributes, such as goodness, purity, and holiness; in time also words for “altar” and “sacrifice” were in some cases invented Religion in those early times may be defined as a simple dialect of human speech, dependent upon the resources of the language. In Asia and its peninsula of Europe, there are three great streams of languages—the Turanian, the Aryan, and the Semitic,—and some of these languages, as he maintained could only have been petrified and rendered so lasting because of similarity of religion aud politics on the part of the people who spoke them. The Chinese language is the earliest representative of Tura nian speech. The religion may be called “monosyllabic,” fo it consists of the worship of a host of single deities—the spirits of the earth, the air, the woods, and the streams; the Chinese also worship the spirits of their ancestors, who are supposed to still possess the power of influencing human affairs. The nature of the ancient religion of China is known from the writings of Confucius alone ; yet in reality he was but the transmitter of a more ancient religion still, and he says so himself. The religion of the Semitic races is pre eminently the worship of God in history—of God as a ruler and founder of nations ; the words used by all the Semites for “God” represent strength and authority. Some of the ancient gods of the Semites were stronger than others, hence the Semitic Gods had a natural tendency to flow together, and to make the one God of later times. The ancient worship of the Aryan races has been carried into other lands by that pushing people; they do not worship nature, but God in nature. The Aryans before their separation—that is to say, before Sanscrit was spoken in India, and before Greek was spoken in Europe -had a religion which can still be to some extent ascertained. By picking out those words which are the same in French. Italian, and Spanish—words which must have been derived from a common source, it is possible to learn something of the