I do see the indelible traces in every faculty really characteristic
of our nature; as, for example, our senses and our appetites? Powerfully
does Hume urge this argument in his--"Natural History of Religions."
(Introduction)

I have my doubts--admire the modesty of a sceptic--whether the entire
phenomena of religion do not favor the conclusion, that man, in this
respect, only the traces of an imperfect, truncated creature; that,
he is in the predicament of the half-created lion so graphically
described by Milton:--

"Now half appeared
The tawny lion, pawings to get free
His hinder parts";

only, unfortunately, man's "hinder parts"--his lower nature--have
come up first, and appear, unhappily, prominent; while his nobler
"moral and spiritual faculties" still seem stuck in the dust!

There is, indeed, another hypothesis, which squares, perhaps, equally
well with the phenomena,--I mean that of the Bible:--that man is not
in his original state; that the religions constitution of his nature,
in some way or other, has received a shock. But either this, or the
supposition that man has been insufficiently equipped for the uniform
elimination of religious truth, is, I think, alone in harmony with
the facts; and to those facts, patent on the page of the whole world's
history, I appeal for proof that man has not on these highest subjects,
the certitude of any internal revelation, marked by the remotest
analogy to those other undoubted principles and faculties which exhibit
themselves with undeniable uniformity.