Hibbert Lectures.
All objects which we perceive and afterwards conceive and name must be circumscribed, must have been separated from their surroundings, must be measurable, and can thus only become perceivable and knowable and namable.... They are therefore finite in their very nature.... If finiteness is a necessary characteristic of our ordinary knowledge, it requires but little reflection to perceive that limitation or finiteness, in whatever sense we use it, always implies a something beyond. We are told that our mind is so constituted, whether it is our fault or not, that we cannot conceive an absolute limit. Beyond every limit we must always take it for granted that there is something else. But what is the reason of this? The reason why we cannot conceive an absolute limit is because we never perceive an absolute limit; or in other words, because in perceiving the finite we always perceive the infinite also.... There is no limit which has not two sides, the one turned towards us, the other turned towards what is beyond; and it is that Beyond which from the earliest days has formed the only real foundation of all that we call transcendental in our perceptual, as well as in our conceptual, Knowledge.
Gifford Lectures, I.
The infinite was not discovered behind the veil of nature only, though its manifestation in physical phenomena was no doubt the most primitive and the most fertile source of mythological and religious ideas. There were two more manifestations of the infinite and the unknown, which must not be neglected, if we wish to gain a complete insight into the theogonic process through which the human mind had to pass from its earliest days. The infinite disclosed itself not only in nature but likewise in man, looked upon as an object, and lastly in man looked upon as a subject. Man looked upon as an object, as a living thing, was felt to be more than a mere part of nature. There was something in man, whether it was called breath or spirit or soul or mind, which was perceived and yet not perceived, which was behind the veil of the body, and from a very early time was believed to remain free from decay, even when illness and death had destroyed the body in which it seemed to dwell. There was nothing to force even the simplest peasant to believe that because he saw his father dead, and his body decaying, therefore what was known as the man himself, call it his soul or his mind or his person, had vanished altogether out of existence. A philosopher may arrive at such an idea, but a man of ordinary understanding, though terrified by the aspect of death, would rather be inclined to believe that what he had known and loved and called his father or mother must be somewhere, though no longer in the body.... It is perhaps too much to say that such a belief was universal; but it certainly was and is still very widely spread. In fact it constitutes a very large portion of religion and religious worship.
Gifford Lectures, I.
Nature, Man, and Self are the three great manifestations in which the infinite in some shape or other has been perceived, and every one of these perceptions has in its historical development contributed to what may be called religion.
Gifford Lectures, I.
Like all other experiences, our religious experience begins with the senses. Though the senses seem to deliver to us finite experiences only, many, if not all, of them can be shown to involve something beyond the Known, something unknown, something which I claim the liberty to call infinite. In this way the human mind was led to the recognition of undefined, infinite agents or agencies beyond, behind, and within our finite experience. The feelings of fear, awe, reverence, and love excited by the manifestations of some of these agents or powers began to react on the human mind, and thus produced what we call Natural Religion in its lowest and simplest form—fear, awe, reverence, and love of the gods.
Gifford Lectures, I.