RELIGIOUS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 849, 8 June 1888, Page 7

RELIGIOUS.

FEELING AFTER GODThe evolution of the mythical ideas of gods starts from the lowest oxtaut myths of the least developed contemporary races, and shows that these myths are derived from the intellectual and material conditions of the people among whom they exist. We then trace among nations of gradually ad. vancing culture the effects produced on the original stuff of myths by clearer conceptions of the nature of man and of the world. We find, last, that the spirit of civilization, especially amODg the educated classes of Greece, nurged away as with fire almost all that was material, bestial, savage, in the conception of Deity, while ritual, art, myth, local priestly tradition, aud popular superstition still retained much of the ancient fable not different in kind from that which yet survives among Kamilaroi, Cahrocs, Ahts, and Melanesians. But at all times the undying savage in the soul of man has been quick to revive and to re.assert itself in myth. Spiritual philosophies die and decay, and in their twilight the earliest and the rudest creeds, ‘spiritualism,’ polytheism, fetishism, mystic, mummery and magic, again and again reappear. They creep out from the huts of peasants, and from the battered fanes of half-forgotten rural gods ; and from dark corners of the soul they return to life, as iu the time of Porphyry and Plotinus, or as in the ritual rubbish of the Brahmanas, or in the witoh-trials of tno Middle and Modern Ages. Man can never be certain that he has expelled the savage from his temples and from his heart; yet even the lowest known savages, in hours of awe and of need, lift their hands and their thoughts to their Father and to ours, who is not far from any one of us.—From Myth, Ritual, and Religion.

The Republic, of France- has expelled the teaching Brothers and Sisters from the public schools, and the Catholics of the country have started free schools of their own, which now number 10,067, and have 1,007,000 children on the rolls. In 1575 the number of schools kept by religions was 7,500, with an attendance of 5Q0;C00 pupils. It is the intention of ‘ General ’ Booth of. the Salvation Army to despatch bands of Salvation missionaries to Zululand and South America. The work has already begun in Jerusalem.