at this, for, after all, the doctrines of the great religions of the world were in their early days but thinly veneered upon a groundwork of that universal religion revealed by nature, the earliest and most natural religion of mankind. From Constantinople on the Bosphorus, Christianity spread through Russia into Northern Asia. From Mecca and Stambul, Islam ran like wildfire across Central Asia into China; while from Urga and Lhassa, the Lamas of the yellow religion quietly grafted on to the Mongol and Tartar tribes of Northern Asia those distorted superstitions which now surround the memory of him "Who sprang from the Lotus." But the moral doctrines and ideals of these three religions were presented in many parts of the world to a humanity that knew no objects of reverence except those agents of nature which it could see before its eyes. And so it was that these revealed religions so often degenerated into a low and superstitious fetishism profitable mainly to priests, Mullahs and Lamas. But I venture to suggest that in many parts of the world the old nature worship is still the fabric of man's moral structure. Under the influence of national exigencies it is generally obscured, but under the influences of nature it tends to revive. Thus, in contact with nature from their cradles, the natives of Siberia learn to look with awe and reverence upon the mountains, forests, rivers and lakes. So did I when I found myself alone in the dark and endless pine forest, or upon some rugged peak with piles of jagged screes in an uninhabited country, remarkable only for its featureless monotony. It was then that I first learnt to understand the native reverence, and fear of the spirits of nature, which imagination con-
