Indeed, many men who believe most firmly that without religion human life will be dead, rest their hopes for the future not on the revival and triumph of any one alleged revelation, but on the gradual evanescence of the special claims of all.

Nor can we find any sharp and defined line of argument to convince them that they are wrong.

The objections, however, to which this position is open are, I think, none the less cogent because they are somewhat general; and to all practical men, conversant with life and history, it must be plain that the necessity of doing God's will being granted, it is a most anxious and earnest question whether that will has not been in some special and articulate way revealed to us.
Take the mass of religious humanity, and giving it a natural creed, it will be found that instinctively and inevitably it asks for more.

Such a creed by itself has excited more longings than it has satisfied, and raised more perplexities than it has set at rest.

It is true that it has supplied men with a sufficient analysis of the worth they attach to life, and of the momentous issues attendant on the way in which they live it.