time the mother of two religions founded on sacred codes, -the religion of Confucius and that of Lao-tse.

With these eight religions, the library of the sacred books of the whole human family is complete, leaving the largest portion of mankind, including some of the most valiant champions in the religious and intellectual struggles of the world, without representation in this theological library.

Of those without canonical books, we have among the larger families or branches of the Aryans, the Greeks and Romans; among the Teutonics, the Celtics, and Slavonics, and among the Semitics, the Babylonian, Phenicean, and Cathoginian families.

The two beds in which the streams of Aryan and Semitic thought have been rolling for centuries cover but a narrow tract of country compared with the vastness of our globe as we have seen, yet, we have the evidences that there has not been a nation or people without a religion-a knowledge of a supervising power-a God, and a future Life.

We learn, that along the shores of the ancient Nile are to be seen pyramids still standing, ruins of temples, and labyrinth, the walls of which are covered with hieroglyphic inscriptions of gods and goddesses; that if we follow the sacred streams to their distant sources we will find the whole continent of Africa full of interesting evidences of religion, vague hopes of a future life, and not altogether faded reminiscence of a Supreme God; that everywhere, upon the islands that rise in the oceans of the earth, whether among the dark Papuan, the yellowish Malay, the brown Polynesian races scattered on these islands, and even among the lowest of the low in the scale

of humanity, there are if we will but listen, whisperings about divine beings and imaginings of a future life; that there are prayers and sacrifices which even in their most degraded and degrading form bear witness to that old and ineradicable faith, that everywhere there is a God to hear our prayers if we will but call upon him and to accept our offerings if they are offered as a token of a greater heart.

Upon the double continent of America, the first discoverers found, in the central and southern continents, an ancient and as it would seem an independent faith, and, among the red-skinned inhabitants-the red Indians of the northern continent-home-grown specimens of religious faith.

In the Asiatic continent, altho nearly the whole of it is now occupied by one of the eight book-religions— Mosaism, Christianity, Mohammedanism, Brahmanism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, the religion of Confucius, or that of Lao-tse-partly below the surface and in some places still on the surface more primitive forms of worship have maintained themselves, such as the Shumanism of the Mongolian race and the Mythology of the Finish and Ethonian tribes; and as we delve into the religious history and tradition of the past ages our horizon expands on every side and we find that wherever there are traces of human life there are traces of religion.

From the history of the world and the experiences and observations of man, it is apparent that at times the human intellect naturally becomes sufficiently transcendent to understand that there is a higher ruling and controlling power, and a life beyond the grave; that when relieved from the controlling influence of the human side

of this life and attuned to the divine, the intellect of man becomes sufficiently transcendent to look within upon the spiritual, and see and understand something of things supernatural; and that under proper conditions the intellect of man sustains the same relation to the divine side of this life that it does to the humane side, transmitting impressions from both the human and the divine sides of this life to the consciousness of man; for every age and most if not every people has had its own peculiar religion, and its individuals called seers and prophets who at times and under certain conditions intellectually transcended the finite, perceived the Infinite, and divined current and future events which they published as their visions and prophesies, and which they or others have written in books and which forms the larger part of what is called religious history of the world.

PART II

THE BOOK OR CANONICAL

RELIGIONS

In part one, we learned that there never has been a people or nation without a religion; that in the world's history wherever there has been found traces of human life there has been found traces of a religion; that at no time in the known history of the world has the religion of the people been one, but each people or nation has had its own peculiar religious faith and practice; that the religion of the world has been of two general kinds-book or canonical and bookless or illiterate; that of the book or canonical there were eight-Mosaism, Christianity, Mohammedanism, Brahmanism, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, the religion of Confucius, and that of Lao-tse in China, while those of the bookless or illiterate were many more scattered thruout the world; and that most if not all of these religions were claimed, if not by their founders, then by their disciples, to have been the result of divine Revelation.

In the religious literature of the world, we find, besides the eight canonical books or bibles referred to, numerous religious writings, religious philosophies, and philosophies of religion; and that there is religious literature and books sacred and commentary, written about