A great solvent of it is found in the idealizing faculty, and by a free use of this the process of disintegrating all that is spiritual in human nature goes on with marvelous ease and success, till a bare residuum of gross and earthy material is all that is left behind. Now, we do not doubt that to persons in whom the religious sentiment is dormant and inoperative, an explanation of this kind of the genesis of spiritual feeling may seem plausible, perhaps even convincing. Unconscious themselves of any yearnings after God, any soaring away of the heart to find elevation and repose in a Being of infinite goodness, it may appear reasonable to them to think that such feelings, when alleged to exist in others, are fanciful, morbid, or even hypocritical. No argumentation can be too flimsy, no explanation too meager, to dispose satisfactorily of even the plainest facts in the estimation of persons who possess no faculty for understanding them. But to those who know by experience what religion is, whose souls are on fire with a passionate longing for God, and are thrilled with the joy of communion with him in his goodness and love, it is really impossible that any explanation of any kind should fail to appear infected with the taint of flagrant absurdity and baselessness.
Exceptional phenomena fail to afford a sufficiently secure basis of induction.
They may possibly be misinterpreted, and the generalization from them run in an erroneous direction. We need a wide array of facts to allow us to feel safe in our inference. Here, then, we are thrown back on the historical development of the religious instinct, and to make our conclusions sure we must feel our way along this line of human growth That religion is indigenous to human nature, and springs up in it by natural growth as a legitimate and normal product of its unfolding faculties and properties, may fairly be taken as certain. If religion does not have this native character, but is something artificial and alien, it would be difficult to alight upon any one property or affection exhibited by man against which the same charge might not be brought. No nation has ever existed in historic times without a religion.