me a noble one, which Christian theists should welcome as an attempt to rescue religious concepts from the exclusive claims of animists of the extreme type.
In the fifth Lecture, "On the True Genesis of Religion," the argument is as strong as possible, perhaps, from the standpoint of original monotheism. But that view, so far as it postulates a man in Eden who was a monotheist of the type implied in modern theism, has been sapped and mined by the correlative sciences of human development. Indeed, Professor Kellogg intimates more than once, that the original monotheism was an elementary one, and were it not for the misunderstanding of Professor Max Müller's position, whereby sensationalism is made the source of the whole religious content, Dr. Kellogg' s argument would seem to be identical with that of Professor Müller. For he says, "We find, then, the origin of religion in these two factors: the one, subjective, the other objective; the former, the constitution of man's nature, in virtue of which he necessarily believes in the existence of a Power invisible and supernatural, to which he stands necessarily related; the latter, in the actual revelation of such a Power in the phenomena of conscience, and in the physical universe without us." If the fact of sin can be reconciled with his own view of man's original concept of Deity, it is equally reconcilable with Professor Müller 's. The progress of the child in intellectual and moral perception more and more clearly reveals the fact of sin. Many persons are to-day found in Christendom who seem to be monotheists, animists, and fetishists in the various moods of religious feeling. The primitive man trying to grasp the unitary concept of Deity — call it the 'Infinite' or the 'Universal Power' — may have had moods in which animism and polytheism played their part.
But the Divine education is one of progress, not one of disaster. The advance of the consciousness of sin and need of redemption is parallel with the advance from inferior to higher intelligence and moral perceptions.
Dr. Kellogg' s book is a valuable contribution to the History and Philosophy of Religion. The scholarship manifested is worthy of respect. A generous candor is shown in the collection of historic illustrations which sometimes tell against his argument. The only contention one may have with the Lectures is that the point of view throws the facts of progressive history out of perspective. Christianity is, or ought to be, the most cheerful philosophy of religion, and Scripture, indeed, itself teaches us that there has been a progress of man from the beginning, under heavenly guidance.
