Sir, I believe,—­the Master rose from his chair as he spoke, and said in a deep and solemn tone, but without any declamatory vehemence,—­sir, I believe that we are at this moment in what will be recognized not many centuries hence as one of the late watches in the night of the dark ages.  There is a twilight ray, beyond question.  We know something of the universe, a very little, and, strangely enough, we know most of what is farthest from us.  We have weighed the planets and analyzed the flames of the—­sun and stars.  We predict their movements as if they were machines we ourselves had made and regulated.  We know a good deal about the earth on which we live.  But the study of man has been so completely subjected to our preconceived opinions, that we have got to begin all over again.  We have studied anthropology through theology; we have now to begin the study of theology through anthropology.  Until we have exhausted the human element in every form of belief, and that can only be done by what we may call comparative spiritual anatomy, we cannot begin to deal with the alleged extra-human elements without blundering into all imaginable puerilities.  If you think for one moment that there is not a single religion in the world which does not come to us through the medium of a preexisting language; and if you remember that this language embodies absolutely nothing but human conceptions and human passions, you will see at once that every religion presupposes its own elements as already existing in those to whom it is addressed.  I once went to a church in London and heard the famous Edward Irving preach, and heard some of his congregation speak in the strange words characteristic of their miraculous gift of tongues.  I had a respect for the logical basis of this singular phenomenon.  I have always thought it was natural that any celestial message should demand a language of its own, only to be understood by divine illumination.  All human words tend, of course, to stop short in human meaning.  And the more I hear the most sacred terms employed, the more I am satisfied that they have entirely and radically different meanings in the minds of those who use them.  Yet they deal with them as if they were as definite as mathematical quantities or geometrical figures.  What would become of arithmetic if the figure 2 meant three for one man and five for another and twenty for a third, and all the other numerals were in the same way variable quantities?  Mighty intelligent correspondence business men would have with each other!  But how is this any worse than the difference of opinion which led a famous clergyman to say to a brother theologian, “Oh, I see, my dear sir, your God is my Devil.”