But when they come practically to choose their way, they find that such religion is of little help to them.

It never puts out a hand to lift or lead them.

It is an alluring voice, heard far off through a fog, and calling to them, '_Follow me!_' but it leaves them in the fog to pick their own way out towards it, over rocks and streams and pitfalls, which they can but half distinguish, and amongst which they may be either killed or crippled, and are almost certain to grow bewildered.

And even should there be a small minority, who feel that this is not true of themselves, they can hardly help feeling that it is true of the world in general.

A purely natural theism, with no organs of human speech, and with no machinery for making its spirit articulate, never has ruled men, and, so far as we can see, never possibly can rule them.