any metaphysical problem; I wish only, in the plainest possible
sense, to ask, and to have an answer, upon this one point--how
much is understood by that obscure term,* _'religion,'_ when
used by a Christian? Only I am punctilious upon one demand, viz.,
that the answer shall be comprehensive. We are apt in such cases
to answer elliptically, omitting, because silently presuming as
understood between us, whatever _seems_ obvious. To prevent
_that_, we will suppose the question to be proposed by an
emissary from some remote planet,--who, knowing as yet absolutely
nothing of us and our intellectual differences, must insist (as
_I_ insist) upon absolute precision, so that nothing essential
shall be wanting, and nothing shall be redundant.

*[Footnote: '_That obscure term;_'--i. e. not obscure as
regards the use of the term, or its present value, but as regards
its original _genesis_, or what in civil law is called the
_deductio_. Under what angle, under what aspect, or relation,
to the field which it concerns did the term _religion_ originally
come forward? The general field, overlooked by religion, is the
ground which lies between the spirit of man and the supernatural
world. At present, under the humblest conception of religion, the
human spirit is supposed to be interested in such a field by the
conscience and the nobler affections, But I suspect that originally
these great faculties were absolutely excluded from the point of
view. Probably the relation between spiritual _terrors_ and
man's power of propitiation, was the problem to which the word
_religion_ formed the answer. Religion meant apparently, in
the infancies of the various idolatries, that _latreia_, or
service of sycophantic fear, by which, as the most approved method
of approach, man was able to conciliate the favor, or to buy off