The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-08-08
SPIRIT or THE PRESS
editorial Opinions Of the Leading Journals
upon Current Topies-CompiIed Every
DAY for the Evening Telegraph.
THE ORIGIN OF RELIGION.


Muller, delivered last winter before the Brit
ish Royal Institution a series of lectures on
the Science of religion, which are now in the
course Of publication in various magazines.
The learned Professor treats the subject with
the same breadth and fulness, and the same
richness of illustration, which rendered his
lectures on language so interesting; but he
seems to MS to proceed, as do many other
scientific men who have undertaken a similar
task, upon a radically unsound assumption.
Professor Muller asserts, what is undoubt-
edly true, that the various forms of religion
which have prevailed and do prevail upon
the earth may be classified like languages;
and, further, that there are family likenesses
between certain religions and classes of reli-
gions and certain languages and groups of
languages. Hence he infers that because
language is of human invention and elabora-
ton, religions are also of human origin,
aud he proceeds to discuss them accordingly.
The theory that there was one primeval reve-
lation to the ancestors of the human race.
which has been corrupted and distorted into
many forms he disputes, as having no better
foundation than that which makes language
to have been similarly revealed in a single
primitive form, and afterwards broken up
into the languages of the world. Without
going so far as Mr.. Barring Gould and ascrib-
ing religion to the secretive action of the
cerebral glands, he none the less believes it
to nave been contrived out of an ingenious
and p~oetical Interpretation of natural pheno-
mena. The idea of a supernatural revelation
he scouts as entirely worthless in a scientific
point of view, and more than hints that it
rests only upon fraud and delusion.
1t il not demonstrable by actual proof that
without revelation mankind would have no
conception of God, of the life after death,
and of religious matters in general, because,
a. for honl. 90 hicfnrv ayfandc opI oc uyiIa1y
as the explorations of modern travellers have
extended, the world has at no time and in no
locality been left without such a revelation
more or less perfectly preserved. The Oldest
authentic records in existence are those
Of the Jewish nation; and they are known to
embody fragments of still more ancient writ
inGs. AS to the sacred books of the Asiatics,
they may or may not possess the antiquity
assigned to them; but admitting them to be
as much older than the Hebrew Scriptures
as it is asserted they are, still they too pro-
fessedly embody ideas which have not been
invented by men, but which were transmitted
from a higher source. The heather who have
no written books have still oral traditions of
a supernatural revelation, and even the
savoges of America and Africa point to a
time when their ancestors received ~instruc-
ton from supernatural beings. But SO far
as this universally of a belief in revelation
proves anything, it proves that belief to be
true. What is so generally credited is not
likely TO be the fabrication of interested de-
~ceivers.
But further than this, observation teaches
that the unassisted faculties of the human
mind do not suggest the theory or the prac-
tees OF religion. There never was a child
who of himself discovered the existence of
God and his relation to Him. In the few
instances in which children have grown up
like wild animals, away from instruction of
all kinds. they have shown no traces of re-
ligious development; and in no case have
savages, without the help of missionaries of
some purer religion, made any improvement
upon their hereditary superstitions. What
sver changes have occurred in their notions
have been for the worse-froma more intel
ligent form of belief to one less so.
Putting the matter to our own individual
experience, we shall find that nothing in this
world-all theorists to the contrary notwith-
standiDg-suggests the existence of any other
world or any other class of beings or state of
existence than those of which our senses
inform us. We might go on forever learning
the properties of matter and the wonderful
uses TO which natural force can be put; but
no experiments of science or art would ever
prove to us that there is a God. In fact, the
most learned natural philosophers have often
been the sturdiest atheists. No amount of
acquaintance with the wonders of creation
suggests of itself the thought of a creator.
Given the conception, indeed, and science
can ~abundantly corroborate and illustrate it.
After Columbus had shown how to make the
egg stand on it's end, all who saw the per-
formance could repeat it. So, in the light
that revelation gives, the book of nature tells
of God; but without that light its pages are
devoid OF any truth higher than their own
phenomena.
II is true that the common notion that one
single revelation was made to men once for
all. and that all religions have been derived
from that, may be erroneous. 1t would be
-presumptuous in any mortal to undertake to
limit the operations of Providence to so mar
row q method of manifestation. In showing
the unity of design in the various types of
revelation which have been made to man.
kind, Prof. Muller's labors may prove valua.
bic. If the same influences of mini and cir
cumstances which have affected the develop
g of language can be proved to have
affected that of religion, it will, so far from
destroying our sense of obligation to the
Divine Being, increase it. But to attempt to
make out that He has never interposed bv
revelation to lift His children out of their
mental darkness, is to impeach His benevo-
lence in manner offensive to the devout
and unsatisfactory to the truly rational in
quirer. 1t is at once more edifying and more
in accordance with reason to believe that He
who made us has also communicated to us
information concerning Himself and His rela-
ions to as, than to conjecture that He has
abandoned us to the exercise of our own
feeble powers.
THE COAL STRIKES ONCE MORE.
From the n. Y. Times.
The strikes in the Pennsylvania coal re-
giOns are at length concluded, and thas ter
inmates a struggle in the course of which