rings in the belief that these would prevent their suffering from
rheumatism, I could not perceive any direct connection between such
superstitious practices and religion, and the construction of a new
definition was rendered necessary. The following, I think, covers the
whole ground: _Beliefs and practices founded upon erroneous ideas of God
and nature._ With this meaning the term "Superstition" is employed in
the following pages, and if the definition commend itself to the reader,
it will at once become apparent that the only way by which freedom from
superstition can be attained is to search Nature and Revelation for
correct views of God and His methods of working. Notwithstanding our
pretensions to a correct religious knowledge, a pure theology, and
freedom from everything like superstition, it is strange yet true, that,
if we except the formulated reply to the question in the Westminster
Catechism, "What is God," scarcely two persons--perhaps no two
persons--have exactly the same idea of God. We each worship a God of our
own. In one of the late Douglas Jerrold's "Hedgehog Letters" he
introduces two youths passing St Giles' Church at a lonely hour, when
the one addresses the other thus:--"The old book and the parson tell us
that at the beginning God made man in his own image. We have now
reversed this, and make God in our image." A sad truth, although not
new; Saint Paul made a similar remark to the philosophic Athenians; but
the remark applies not to this age or to Saint Paul's age alone--its
applicability extends to every age and every people. As Goethe remarks,
"Man never knows how anthropomorphic he is." Our minds instinctively
seek an explanation of the cause or causes of the different phenomena
constantly occurring around us, but instinct does not supply the
solution. Only by patient watching and consideration can this be arrived
at; but in former ages scientific methods of investigation were either
not known, or not cared for, and so men were satisfied with merely
guessing at the causes of natural phenomena, and these guesses were made