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FOURTH LECTURE.
DELIVERED AT THE ROYAL INSTITUTION,
MARCH 12, 1870.
W H EN I came to deliver the first of this short
VV course of lectures, I confess I felt sorry for having undertaken so difficult a task; and if I could have withdrawn from it with honour, I should gladly have done so. Now that Lhave only this one lecture left, I feel equally sorry, and I wish I could continue my course in order to say something more of what I wished to say, and what in four lectures I could say but very imperfectly. From the announcement of my lectures you must have seen that in what I called ‘An Introduction to the Science of Religion' I did not intend to treat of more than some preliminary questions. I chiefly wanted to show in what sense a truly scientific study of religion was possible, what materials there are to enable us to gain a trustworthy knowledge of the principal religions of the world, and according to what principles these religions may be classified. It would perhaps have been more interesting to some of my hearers if we had rushed at once into the ancient temples to look at the broken idols of the past, and to discover, if popsible, some of the fundamental ideas that found expression in the ancient systems of faith and worship. But in order
