MERE THEISM INSUFFICIENT.
I.
I have endeavoured to show, in the course of lectures which I am now bringing to a close, that the light of nature and the works of creation and providence prove the existence, and so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God. This truth ought always to be combined with another—namely, that the light of nature and the works of creation and providence "are not sufficient to give that knowledge of God, and of His will, which is necessary unto salvation." Reason sends forth a true light which is to be trusted and followed so far as it extends, but which is much more limited than the wants of human nature. The deepest discoveries and the highest achievements of the unaided intellect need to be supplemented by truths which can only come to us through special revelation. The natural knowledge of God whichman can attain by the exercise of his own faculties is not sufficient to make him feel that the Eternal bears to him fatherly love, or to break the power of sin within him and over him, or to sustain and develop his moral and spiritual life. It falls far short of what is required to enable a human soul, a religious and immortal being, to accomplish its true destination. It falls far short, in other words, of being what is "necessary unto salvation," in the broad and comprehensive sense which the term salvation bears throughout Scripture.
There are those who, instead of regarding theism as simply so much fundamental truth which Christianity presupposes and applies, would oppose theism to Christianity, and substitute theism for Christianity. They would rest in mere theism and would reject Christianity. They represent theism, dissociated from Christianity, as all-sufficient, and as the religion to which alone the future belongs. In doing so, these men—many of them most earnest and excellent men—seem to me to show great want of reflection, great ignorance of the teachings of history, and a very superficial acquaintance with human nature.
Atheism, polytheism, and pantheism have always proved stronger than mere theism—more popular, more influential on ordinary minds. It is only in alliance with revelation that theism has been able to cope successfully with these foes. Inno land, and in no age, has a theism resting exclusively on the authority of reason gained and retained the assent of more than a small minority of the community. Its adherents may have been men who did credit to their creed—honourable, high-minded, cultivated men—but they have always been few. In India, in Persia, in Greece, in Rome, some specially gifted and religious minds reached, or at least approached, theism; but, on the whole, the development of belief in all these countries was not towards but away from theism. The Israelites, although authoritatively taught monotheism, fell back again and again into polytheism. Mythology is not merely "a disease of language," but also a testimony to the fact that the minds and hearts of the mass of mankind cannot be satisfied with a Deity who is only to be apprehended by abstract thought,—a proof that while a few speculative philosophers may rest content with the God discovered by pure reason, the countless millions of their fellow-men are so influenced by sense, imagination, and feeling, that they have ever been found to substitute for such a God deities whom they could represent under visible forms, as subject to the limitations of space and time, and as actuated by the passions of humanity. Pantheism has a powerful advantage over theism, inasmuch as it can give a colouring of religion to what is virtually atheism, and a semblance of reason evento the most wildly extravagant polytheism. There is no logical necessity why a mere theist should become an atheist, but the causes which tend to produce atheism are too strong to be counteracted by any force inherent in mere theism; and hence, as a matter of historical fact, mere theism has always, even in modern Christendom, largely given place to atheism. All the powers of the world above, and of the world to come, are needed to oppose the powers of the world below, and of the world which now is. Only a much fuller exhibition of the Divine character than is presented to us by mere theism can make faith in God the ruling principle of human life. Mere theism might have sufficed us had we remained perfectly rational and perfectly sinless; but those who fancy that it is sufficient for men as they are, only make evident that they know not what men are. In the state into which we have fallen, we need a higher light to guide us than any which shines on sea or land; we need the light which only shines from the gracious countenance of Christ.
"The world by wisdom knew not God." The whole history of the heathen world testifies to the truth of this affirmation of St Paul. It is an indubitable historical fact that, outside of the sphere of special revelation, man has never obtained such a knowledge of God as a responsible and religious being plainly requires. The wisdom of the heathenworld, at its very best, was utterly inadequate to the accomplishment of such a task as creating a due abhorrence of sin, controlling the passions, purifying the heart, and ennobling the conduct. Not one religion devised by man rested on a worthy view of the character of God; not one did not substitute for the living and true God false and dead idols, or represent Him in a mean and dishonouring light. We are apt to associate with the religion of Greece and Rome the religious philosophy of a few eminent Greek and Roman thinkers who rose above the religion of their age and country. The religion itself was mainly the creation of imagination, and in various respects was extremely demoralising in its tendencies. The worshippers of Jupiter and Juno, of Mars and Venus, and the gods and goddesses who were supposed to be their companions, must have been very often not the better but the worse for worshipping such beings. Certainly, they could find no elevating ideal or correct and consistent rule of moral life among the capricious and unrighteous and impure objects of their adoration. It was less from the religion, the idolatrous polytheism, of Greece and Rome that the human soul in these lands drew spiritual inspiration, than from philosophy, from reason apprehending those truths of natural religion which the positive religion concealed and disfigured and contradicted. If salvation be deliverance from darknessto light, from sin to holiness, from love of the world to love of God, no sane man will say that the Greek or Roman religion was the way to it, or an indication of the way to it.
Did, then, the philosophers discover the way? There is no need that we should depreciate what they did. Men like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, among the Greeks—like Cicero, Epictetus, and Antoninus, among the Romans—obtained wonderful glimpses of Divine truth, and gave to the world noble moral instructions, which are of inestimable value even to this day. But they all failed to effect any deep and extensive reform. They did not turn men from the worship of idols to the service of the true God. They were unable to raise any effective barrier either to superstition or to vice. They were insufficiently assured in their own minds, and spoke as without authority to others. They saw too clearly to be able to believe that the popular religion was true, but not clearly enough to know what to put in its place. In the systems and lives of the very greatest of them there were terrible defects, and neither the doctrine nor the conduct of the majority of those who pretended to follow them, the common specimens of philosophers, was fitted to improve society. Philosophy found outmany truths, but notthe truth. It did not disclose the holiness and love of God—discovered no antidote for the poison of sin—showedthe soul no fountain of cleansing, healing, and life.
The true character of the philosophical theism of antiquity has been admirably described by one of the ablest theologians of the present day. "Theism was discussed as a philosophical, not as a religious question, as one rationale among others of the origin of the material universe, but as no more affecting practice than any great scientific hypothesis does now. Theism was not a test which separated the orthodox philosopher from the heterodox, which distinguished belief from disbelief; it established no breach between the two opposing theorists; it was discussed amicably as an open question: and well it might be, for of all questions there was not one which could make less practical difference to the philosopher, or, upon his view, to anybody, than whether there was or was not a God. Nothing would have astonished him more than, when he had proved in the lecture-hall the existence of a God, to have been told to worship Him. 'Worship whom?' he would have exclaimed; 'worship what? worship how?' Would you picture him indignant at the polytheistic superstition of the crowd, and manifesting some spark of the fire of St Paul 'when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry,' you could not be more mistaken. He would have said that you did not see a plain distinction; that the crowd was righton the religious question, and the philosopher right on the philosophical; that however men might uphold in argument an infinite abstraction, they could not worship it; and that the hero was much better fitted for worship than the Universal Cause—fitted for it not in spite of, but in consequence of, his want of true divinity. The same question was decided in the same way in the speculations of the Brahmans. There the Supreme Being figures as a characterless, impersonal essence, the mere residuum of intellectual analysis, pure unity, pure simplicity. No temple is raised to him, no knee is bended to him. Without action, without will, without affection, without thought, he is the substratum of everything, himself a nothing. The Universal Soul is the Unconscious OmnipresentLooker-on; the complement, as coextensive spectator, of the universal drama of nature; the motionless mirror upon which her boundless play and sport, her versatile postures, her multitudinous evolutions are reflected, as the image of the rich and changing sky is received into the passive bosom of the lake. Thus the idea of God, so far from calling forth in the ancient world the idea of worship, ever stood in antagonism with it: the idol was worshipped because he was not God, God was not worshipped because He was. One small nation alone out of all antiquity worshipped God, believed the universal Being to be a personal Being. That nation waslooked upon as a most eccentric and unintelligible specimen of humanity for doing so; but this whimsical fancy, as it appeared in the eyes of the rest, was cherished by it as the most sacred deposit; it was the foundation of its laws and polity; and from this narrow stock this conception was engrafted upon the human race."[50]
It is historically certain, then, that the world by its unaided wisdom failed to know God. Of course, it may be said that the experiment was incomplete; that even if Christianity had not appeared, the human mind would have found out in process of time all the religious truth needed to satisfy the human heart, guide human life, and sustain human society. But such an assertion is quite arbitrary. History gives it no confirmation. It was only after human wisdom had a lengthened and unembarrassed opportunity of showing what it could accomplish in the most favourable circumstances, and after it had clearly displayed its insufficiency, that Christianity appeared. Christ did not come till it was manifest that reason was wandering farther and farther away from God—that religion had no inherent principle of self-improvement—that man had done his utmost with the unaided resources of his nature to devise a salvation, and had failed. There was no probability whatever that a new and higher civilisation would rise on the ruinsof that which fell when the hordes of Northern barbarians subdued and overran the Roman empire, had not Christianity been present to direct the work of construction.
We need not, however, discuss what might or might not have happened, supposing the sun of Christianity had not appeared on the horizon when that of classical civilisation was hastening to its setting, since it is obvious that the science and philosophy even of the present day, dissevered from revelation, can produce no religion capable of satisfying, purifying, and elevating man's spiritual nature. They are far advanced beyond the stage which they had reached in the time of St Paul. Knowledge has since received large accessions from all sides, and reflection has been taught by a lengthened and varied process of correction and discipline valuable lessons. In mathematical and physical science especially there has been enormous progress. The human mind is now enriched not only with the intellectual wealth which it has inherited from Greece and Rome, but with that of many ages not less fruitful than those in which they flourished. Can we accomplish, then, what the Greeks and Romans so signally failed to achieve? Can we, with all our knowledge of nature and man, devise a religion which shall be at once merely rational and thoroughly effective? Can we, when we set asideChristianity, construct a creed capable of not only commanding the assent of the intellect, but of attracting and changing the heart, quickening and guiding the conscience, and purifying and ennobling the conduct? Can we build a system worthy to be called a religion on any other foundation than that which has been laid in the Gospel? If science and philosophy cannot do anything of this kind even at the present day, we are surely at length entitled to say that the world needs to know more about God than it can find out for itself. In proof that they cannot, we would appeal both to facts and reason—both to the character of what science and philosophy have actually done in this connection, and to the nature of the task which their injudicious friends would impose on them.
What, then, even at the present day, do the ablest of those who reject Christianity propose to offer us instead? Comte would have us to worship humanity. Can we? Comte himself did not believe that we can in any but a very partial and insincere way. If we could, would our worship do either our minds or hearts more good than the worship of Jupiter and Juno did the Greeks of old? Strauss would have us to revere the universe. Is that not to go back to fetichism? Might we not just as wisely and profitably adore a stock or stone? Herbert Spencer would present to us for God the Unknowable. But what thoughts, what feelings,can we have about the Unknowable? Might we not as well worship empty space, the eternal no, or the absolute nothing? Schopenhauer, Hartmann, Mainlander, and others, would have us to go back to Buddhism and welcome annihilation. But it is clear as the light that if the advice were acted on, the springs of intellectual life and social progress would soon be dried up. The philosophy and science on which they exclusively rely have enabled none of these men to find out God; nay, they have left them under the delusion that there is no God to find out, except those strange gods to which I have referred. And being without God in the world, these philosophers, with all their knowledge and accomplishments, are also without any hope of a life beyond the grave. No man need go to them with the question, "What shall I do to inherit eternal life?" Among all their differences—and they are many and radical—on one point they are agreed, and it is that eternal life is but a dream; that the highest hope even of the best of mankind is to survive for a time as a memory and an influence in the minds and conduct of others, after having ceased to be real and personal beings; that the only form in which the aspiration after immortality can be rationally cherished is that which the greatest of contemporary novelists and among the greatest of contemporary poets has expressed in the words:—
"O may I join the choir invisibleOf those immortal dead who live againIn minds made better by their presence: liveIn pulses stirred to generosity,In deeds of daring rectitude, in scornFor miserable aims that end with self,In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,And with their mild persistence urge man's searchTo vaster issues....This is life to come,Which martyred men have made more gloriousFor us who strive to follow."
"O may I join the choir invisibleOf those immortal dead who live againIn minds made better by their presence: liveIn pulses stirred to generosity,In deeds of daring rectitude, in scornFor miserable aims that end with self,In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,And with their mild persistence urge man's searchTo vaster issues....This is life to come,Which martyred men have made more gloriousFor us who strive to follow."
It is as true, then, as ever it was, that the world by wisdom knows not God. The advantages which the eighteen Christian centuries have brought us only make more manifest the world's inability by its own wisdom to know God. The longer the trial has lasted, the more manifest has it become that God's revelation of Himself is indispensable—is what man can provide no substitute for. The philosophy which sets itself in opposition to revelation—which professes to supply in another and better way the spiritual wants to which revelation responds—which aims at constructing a religion out of the conclusions of science—is a mournful failure. The only religious constructions which it has been able to raise, even with all the scientific resources of the nineteenth century at its command, are simply monuments of human folly.
This is just what was to be expected; for apart from special Divine teaching, apart from special Divine revelation, man cannot truly know God, asa sinful being needs to know Him. Apart, for example, from the revelation which God has made of Himself in Christ, the mind cannot possibly attain to a sincere and well-grounded conviction even of that primary truth on which all the perfection of religion and all the happiness and hopes of mankind depend—the truth that God is really a Father, with all a Father's love, to the children of men. There are manifold signs or evidences of God's goodness and bounty in creation and providence, but, unless seen in the light reflected on them from redemption, they fall far short of a complete proof of God's cherishing fatherly love to sinful men. In the light of the Cross it is otherwise; the man who looks at the works of creation in that light will unhesitatingly and with full reason say, "My Father made them all," and will easily and clearly trace in all the dealings of providence a Father's hand guiding His children. Suppose, however, that blessed light not shining or shut out, and that creation and providence are before us in no other light than their own,—what then? What can creation and providence teach us about God?
Substantially this only: that He has vast power, since He has created and sustains and controls the whole of this mighty universe; wondrous wisdom, since He has arranged everything so well and directs everything so well; and a goodness corresponding to His power and wisdom, since a beneficentpurpose may be detected underlying all His works of creation and pervading the course of providence. I cannot suppose that any one will seriously maintain that creation and providence teach us more than that God is thus powerful and wise and good; and fully granting that they teach us all this, if any one mean by God being the Father of men no more than that He is as good as He is powerful and wise, and that His power and wisdom have been so employed on behalf of men that good gifts meet them at every step, I readily agree with him that creation and providence are sufficient to show God to be a Father in that sense and to that extent.
But is there nothing more, nothing higher than this, implied in fatherhood among men? Unquestionably there is. Love in the form of mere goodness is far from the noblest and most distinctive quality in a human father's heart; nay, there is no true fatherliness of heart at all in a man in whom there is nothing better than that. One can, by an effort of imagination, indeed, conceive a man to have children so absolutely innocent and happy, and so perfectly guarded from all possibility of evil and suffering, that love in the form of goodness or kindness would be the only kind of love he could show them; but would his fatherly love be ever really tested in that case? Could he ever show the deeper, the truly distinctive feelings of afather's heart—those we so often see manifested in the toils, the hardships, the dangers, the sacrifices of wealth, comfort, and even life, which parents undertake and endure for their children? Certainly not. Apply this to God. In what sense is He a Father? In what sense has He fatherly love? Among the angels this question could have no place, for they were such perfectly innocent and happy children that love in the form of goodness was all they required—all that could be shown to them. And it would have been the same with men also, if they had not fallen. But as soon as sin, suffering, and death invaded earth, and seized on man's body and soul, and help or healing there was none for him in any creature, the most awful of questions for the human race came to be, whether or not God was a Father in the full meaning of that term, or, in other words, whether or not He had a love which, in order to save men, would submit to humiliation, suffering, sacrifice?
Now that is what I say creation and providence cannot prove. Point to anything in creation or to anything in ordinary providence which you can show to havecostGod anything. You can easily point to thousands and thousands of things and events which you may justly conclude to be signs or gifts of God's goodness; but can you point to one thing in creation, one event in ordinary providence, which you can seriously maintain to comefrom a self-sacrificing love such as a father displays when he rushes into a house in flames, or throws himself into a raging flood, to save the life of his child at the risk of his own? If you cannot, you fail to prove God a Father in the sense I mean. And in that sense, which is the true sense, there seems to me no possibility of proving God a Father from creation and providence, apart from redemption.
Wherein is it that both fail? Obviously in this, that they can show no traces of sacrifice on God's part. But it is just here that the revelation of redemption comes in. God, in the unspeakable gift of His Son, shows us a power of sacrifice infinitely above anything known among men—an intensity of tenderest fatherly affection of which the strongest fatherly affection on earth is but a pale and feeble reflection; and Christ in His incarnation, life, sufferings, and death, reveals to us not merely the power, and wisdom, and goodness of God, but the very depths, if we may so speak, of His heart as a Father, enabling us to feel without a doubt that now indeed are we the sons of God. Nothing but a special revelation, however, could thus unveil and disclose God. The natural reason could not thus discern Him by its unaided power. And yet it is only in the knowledge of God as a Father that the soul can either discern or realise its true destiny.
There are many other precious truths set before us in the Gospel which we might in like manner show to be at once most necessary for human guidance, and inaccessible to unaided human research. We shall not, however, dwell on them or even enumerate them. The entire problem of our present and future salvation is beyond our powers of solution. The light of nature and the works of creation and providence cannot show man a way of reconciliation to God. No man by mere human wisdom, by any searching into the secrets of nature or providence, can find that out. Mere human wisdom is utter folly here; and if man may be wise at all in this connection, he must confess his natural folly, the powerlessness of his own reason, and must consent to be guided by the wisdom of God—or, in other words, to accept Christ, who is the wisdom of God to us for salvation, who is God's solution of the problem of our salvation. The only real wisdom possible to man must, from the very nature and necessity of the case, be the wisdom of renouncing his own wisdom. If he say, I shall solve this awful problem for myself, without help from any one, then he in his wisdom is a most manifest fool, whose folly will ruin him; but if he have the candour to confess his own folly, to admit his own intellect powerless here, and to acknowledge the wisdom of God and acquiesce in His plan of salvation, then, in the very act of confessing himselffoolish he is made wise, for Christ is made wisdom unto him.
The oracle at Delphi pronounced Socrates the wisest of men. Socrates could not understand it, and yet he was unwilling to disbelieve the oracle, so he went about from one person reputed wise to another, in order to be able to say, "here is a wiser man than I am," or at least to find out what the oracle meant. He went to many, but he found that, while they in reality knew almost nothing that was worth knowing, they thought they knew a great deal, and were angry with one who tried to convince them of their ignorance. So that at last Socrates came to recognise that there was a truth in what had been said about him; to use nearly his own words,—"He left them, saying to himself, I am wiser than these men; for neither they nor I, it would seem, know anything valuable: but they, not knowing, fancy that they do know; I, as I really do not know, so I do not think that I know. I seem, therefore, to be in one small matter wiser than they." Now it is only the kind of spirit which in its degree and about less important matters was in Socrates—it is precisely that kind of spirit about the things which concern eternal life and peace, that can alone make a man wise unto salvation. The most ignorant person, provided he only know that he must renounce his own wisdom as foolishness—which on subjects pertaining tosalvation it really is—and accept what is disclosed in Christ as to salvation, is infinitely wiser than the most able or learned man who trusts solely to his own wisdom apart from Christ's revealed work and will. Both of them are foolish and ignorant; but the one knows it, and, in consequence of knowing it, accepts Christ's plan of salvation, and is made a partaker of infinite wisdom—the other does not know it, and, thinking that he is wise while he is a fool, remains in his folly, and must bear its punishment.
And now I bring this course of lectures to a close. I trust that they may not have been found wholly without profit, through the blessing of Him who despises not even the smallest and most imperfect service, if humbly rendered to Him. I should rejoice to think that I had helped any one to hold, in such a time as the present, with a firmer and more intelligent grasp, the fundamental truth on which all religious faith must rest. Amen.
Note I., page6.
Natural and Revealed Religion.
The Hindus regard the Vedas, the Parsees the Zend-Avesta, and the Mohammedans the Koran, as having been immediately and specially inspired. This means that they believe the spiritual truth contained in these books to belong to revealed religion, although it in reality is merely a portion of natural religion. The Greeks and Romans could not distinguish between nature and revelation, reason and faith, because ignorant of what we call revelation and faith. Without special revelation or inspiration the oriental and classical mind attained, however, to the possession of a very considerable amount of most precious religious truth. In all ages of the Christian Church there have been theologians who have traced at least the germinal principles of such truth to written or unwritten revelation; and probably few patristic or scholastic divines would have admitted that there was a knowledge of God and of His attributes and of His relations to the world whichmight be the object of a science distinct from, and independent of, revelation. This is quite consistent with what is also a fact—namely, that the vast majority of Christian writers have always acknowledged that "the light of nature and the works of creation and providence manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God," and that this general revelation is implied in the special revelation made at sundry times and divers manners and recorded in the Scriptures. The 'Theologia naturalis sive liber creaturum' of the Spanish physician, Raymond de Sebonde, who taught theology in the University of Toulouse during the earlier part of the fifteenth century, was, so far as I know, the first work which, proceeding on the principle that God has given us two books, the book of nature and the book of Scripture, confined itself to the interpretation of the former, merely indicating the mutual relations of natural and revealed religion. Faustus Socinus was one of the first distinctly to maintain that there was no such thing as natural religion—no knowledge of God attainable except from Scripture: see his 'De Auctoritate Scripturæ Sacræ.' A conviction of the importance of natural theology spread very rapidly in the seventeenth century. This contributed to awaken an interest in the various religions of the world, and thus led to the rise of what may be called Comparative Theology, although more generally designated the Philosophy of Religion. Its origin is to be sought in the attempts made to prove that the principles of natural theology were to be found in all religions. Lord Herbert of Cherbury's 'De Religione Gentilium,' published in 1663, was one of the earliest and most characteristic attempts of the kind. From that time to the present the study of religions has proceeded at varying rates ofprogress, but without interruption, and has at length begun to be prosecuted according to the rules of that comparative method which has, in the words of Mr Freeman, "carried light and order into whole branches of human knowledge which before were shrouded in darkness and confusion."
The eighteenth century was the golden age of natural theology. The deists both of England and France endeavoured to exalt natural theology at the expense of positive theology by representing the former as the truth of which the latter was the perversion. "All religions in the world," said Diderot, "are merely sects of natural religion." The prevalent opinion of the freethinkers of his time could not have been more accurately expressed. It was just what his predecessors in England meant by describing Christianity as "a republication of natural religion," and by maintaining that it was "as old as the creation." The wisest opponents of the deists, and thoughtful Christian writers in general—the adherents of the moderate and rational theology of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—strove, on the other hand, to show that natural theology was in reality presupposed by revelation, and that it should carry the mind onwards to the acceptance of revelation. But there were some who undertook to maintain that there was no such thing as natural theology; that reason of itself can teach us absolutely nothing about God or our duties towards Him. The Hutchinsonians, for example, whose best representatives, besides the founder, were Bishop Horne of Norwich, and William Jones, curate of Nayland, believed that all knowledge of religion and morals, and even the chief truths of physical science, ought to be drawn from the Bible. Dr Ellis, in his treatise entitled'The Knowledge of Divine Things from Revelation, not from Reason or Nature' (1743), laboured to prove that neither the being of a God nor any other principle of religion could be legitimately deduced from the study of the phenomena of the universe. He argued on the assumption that the senses are the only natural inlets to knowledge. The late Archbishop Magee adopted his views on this subject. One of the most widely known expositions and defences of the theory is that contained in the 'Theological Institutes' (1823) of the eminent Wesleyan divine, Richard Watson. In order to establish that all our religious knowledge is derived from special revelation, he employs all the usual arguments of scepticism against the proofs of theism and the principles of reason on which they rest. In the Roman Catholic Church, scepticism as to reason and the light of nature has often been combined with dogmatism as to the authority of revelation and the Church. In the system of what is called the theocratic school may be seen the result to which attempts to establish the certitude of authority by destroying the credit of human reason naturally lead. It is a system of which I have endeavoured to give some account in my 'Philosophy of History in France and Germany,' pp. 139-154.
The fact on which I have insisted in the latter part of the lecture—the fact that theism has come to mankind in and through revelation—has caused some altogether to discard the division of religion into natural and revealed. They pronounce it to be a distinction without a difference, and attribute to it sundry evil consequences. It has led, they think, on the one hand, to depreciation of revelation—and, on the other, to jealousy of reason: some minds looking upon Christianity as at best a republicationof the religion of nature, in which all that is most essential and valuable is "as old as the creation;" while others see in natural religion a rival of revealed religion, and would exclude reason from the religious sphere as much as possible. The distinction is, however, real, and the errors indicated are not its legitimate consequences. If there be a certain amount of knowledge about God and spiritual things to be derived from nature—from data furnished by perception and consciousness, and accessible to the whole human race,—while there is also a certain knowledge about Him which can only have been communicated through a special illumination or manifestation—through prophecy, or miracle, or incarnation,—the distinction must be retained. It is no real objection to it to urge that in a sense even natural religion may be regarded as revealed religion, since in a sense the whole universe is a revelation of God, a manifestation of His name, a declaration of His glory. That is a truth, and, in its proper place, a very important truth, but it is not relevant here: it is perfectly consistent with the belief that God has not manifested Himself merely in nature, but also in ways which require to be carefully distinguished from the manifestation in nature. In like manner, the distinction is not really touched by showing that revealed religion has embodied and endorsed the truths of natural religion, or by proving that even what is most special in revelation is in a sense natural. These are both impregnable positions. The Bible is to a large extent an inspired republication of the spiritual truths which are contained in the physical creation, and in the reason, conscience, and history of man. But this does not disprove that it is something more. The highestand most special revelation of God—His revelation in Jesus Christ—was also the fullest realisation of the true nature of man. But this is no reason why we should not distinguish between the general and the special in that revelation. We can only efface the distinction by reducing Christ to a mere man, or confounding God with man in a pantheistic manner.
It has been further objected to the division of religion into natural and revealed that it is unhistorical, that natural religion is only revealed religion disguised and diluted—Christianity without Christ. It never existed, we are told, apart from revelation, and never would have existed but for revelation. But this very objection, it will be observed, implies that natural religion is not identical with revealed religion—is not revealed religion pure and simple—is not Christianity with Christ. Why is this? Is it not because revealed religion contains more than natural religion—what reason cannot read in the physical universe or human soul? Besides, while the principles of natural religion were presented in revelation in a much clearer form than in any merely human systems, and while there can be no reasonable doubt that but for revelation our knowledge of them would be greatly more defective than it is, to maintain that they had no existence or were unknown apart from revelation, is manifestly to set history at defiance. Were there no truths of natural religion in the works of Plato, Cicero, and Seneca? Is there any heathen religion or heathen philosophy in which there are not truths of natural religion?
The belief in a natural religion which is independent alike of special revelation and of positive or historical religions has been argued to have originated in the samecondition of mind as the belief in a "state of nature" entertained by a few political theorists in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This can only be done by confounding natural religion with an imaginary patriarchal religion, which is, of course, inexcusable. Natural religion is analogous, not to the state of nature, but to the law of nature of the jurists. Natural religion is the foundation of all theology, as the law of nature is the foundation of all ethical and political science; and just as belief in the law of nature is perfectly independent of the theory of a state of nature, so the belief in natural religion has no connection whatever with any theory of patriarchal or primitive religion.
There is a well-known essay by Professor Jowett on the subject of this note in the second volume of his 'St Paul's Epistles,' &c.
Note II., page9.
Influence of Religion on Morality.
The assertion of Mr Bentham and of Mr J. S. Mill that much has been written on the truth but little on the usefulness of religion, is quite inaccurate. Most of the apologists of religion have set forth the proof that it serves to sustain and develop personal and social morality; and, from the time of Bayle downwards, not a few of its assailants have undertaken to show that it is practically useless or even hurtful. But Bentham may have been the first who proposed to estimate the utility of religion apart from the consideration of its truth. The notionwas characteristically Benthamite. It was likewise far too irrational to be capable of being consistently carried out or applied. The work compiled by Mr Grote from the papers of Mr Bentham, and published under the name of Philip Beauchamp—'Analysis of the Influence of Natural Religion on the Temporal Happiness of Mankind'—and Mr Mill's 'Essay on the Utility of Religion,' are, in almost every second page, as well as in their general tenor, attacks not merely on the utility but on the truth of religion.
The former of these works is an attempt to show that natural religion has done scarcely any good, and produced no end of evils—inflicting, so runs the indictment, unprofitable suffering, imposing useless privations, impressing undefined terrors, taxing pleasure by the infusion of preliminary scruples and subsequent remorse, creating factitious antipathies, perverting the popular opinion, corrupting moral sentiment, producing aversion to improvement, disqualifying the intellectual faculties for purposes useful in this life, suborning unwarranted belief, depraving the temper, and, finally, creating a particular class of persons incurably opposed to the interests of humanity. The author makes out that religion is responsible for this catalogue of mischiefs, by two simple devices. First, he defines religion as "the belief in the existence of an almighty Being, by whom pains and pleasures will be dispensed to mankind during an infinite and future state of existence," or, in other words, he so defines religion as to exclude from the idea of God the thought of moral goodness, righteousness, and holiness. He even insists that the God of natural religion can only be conceived of as "a capricious and insane despot," and bases his argumentation on this assumption. Dr Caselles,who has translated the treatise into French, and prefaced it by an interesting introduction, informs us that the argumentation is not applicable to the new, but only to the old theism. It is historically certain, however, that the "old" theism of Jeremy Bentham and his friends never existed outside of their own imaginations. It is likewise certain that a lamb would acquire a very bad character if it were by definition identified with a wolf, and credited with all that creature's doings. The second device is "a declaration of open war against the principle of separating the abuses of a thing from its uses." The only excuse which can be given for this declaration of a most unjust war is, that Mr Bentham was able completely to misunderstand the obvious meaning of the principle which he assailed. That a book so unfair and worthless should have produced on the mind of Mr J. S. Mill, even when a boy of sixteen, the impression which he describes in his Autobiography would have been inexplicable, had we not known the character of his education.
Mr Mill's own essay is rather strange. It begins with six pages of general observations, which are meant to show that it is a necessary and very laudable undertaking to attempt to prove that the belief in religion, considered as a mere persuasion apart from the question of its truth, may be advantageously dispensed with, any benefits which flow from the belief being local, temporary, and such as may be otherwise obtained, without the very large amount of alloy always contained in religion. Yet we are told that "an argument for the utility of religion is an appeal to unbelievers to induce them to practise a well-meant hypocrisy; or to semi-believers to make them avert their eyes from what might possibly shake theirunstable belief; or, finally, to persons in general to abstain from expressing any doubts they may feel, since a fabric of immense importance to mankind is so insecure at its foundations, that men must hold their breath in its neighbourhood for fear of blowing it down." An argument for the utility of religion is "moral bribery." An argument for its uselessness is highly to be commended. Mr Mill further tells us that "little has been written, at least in the way of discussion or controversy, concerning the usefulness of religion;" and likewise, that "religious writers have not neglected to celebrate to the utmost the advantage both of religion in general and of their own religious faith in particular." The inference must be, that what religious writers urge for the utility of religion is not to be reckoned as reasoning; that only what writers like Mr Bentham and Mr Mill urge against its utility is to be thus regarded. The charity of this view is capped by the assertion that "the whole of the prevalent metaphysics of the present century is one tissue of suborned evidence in favour of religion;" an assertion which is made amusing by following a sentence in which Mr Mill speaks of "the intolerant zeal" of intuitionists. After his general considerations, he professes to inquire what religion does for society, but in reality never enters on the investigation. He devotes two pages to insisting on "the enormous influence of authority on the human mind;" three to emphasising "the tremendous power of education;" and ten to enlarging on "the power of public opinion." He might as relevantly have dwelt on the influence of reason, speech, the press, machinery, clothes, marriage, and thousands of other things which undoubtedly affect the intellectual and moral condition of society. It is as unreasonable to infer that religion is uselessbecause authority, education, and public opinion are powerful, as it would be to infer that the fire in a steam-engine might be dispensed with because water is necessary. Any person who assumes, as Mr Mill assumed, that authority, education, or public opinion may be contrasted with religion—who does not see, as Mr Mill did not see, that all these powers are correlatives, which necessarily intermingle with, imply, and supplement one another—is,ipso facto, unable intelligently to discuss the question, What does religion do for society? In the second part of his essay, Mr Mill ought, in order to have kept his promise, to have considered what influence religion in the sense of belief in and love of God is naturally calculated to exert on the character and conduct of the individual; but instead of this he applies himself to the very different task of attempting to prove that "the idealisation of our earthly life, the cultivation of a high conception of what it may be made, is capable of supplying a poetry, and, in the best sense of the word, a religion, equally fitted to exalt the feelings, and (with the same aid from education) still better calculated to ennoble the conduct, than any belief respecting the unseen powers." He forgets to inquire whether there is any opposition between "the idealisation of our earthly life" and "belief respecting the unseen powers," or whether, on the contrary, religious belief is not the chief source of the idealisation of our earthly life. That this logical error is as serious as it is obvious, appears from the fact that ten years later Mr Mill himself confessed that "it cannot be questioned that the undoubting belief of the real existence of a Being who realises our own best ideas of perfection, and of our being in the hands of that Being as the ruler of the universe, gives anincrease of force to our aspirations after goodness beyond what they can receive from reference to a merely ideal conception" (Theism, p. 252). His proof that the worship of God is inferior to the religion of humanity rests mainly on these three assertions: (1) That the former, "what now goes by the name of religion," "operates merely through the feeling of self-interest;" (2) That "it is impossible that any one who habitually thinks, and who is unable to blunt his inquiring intellect by sophistry, should be able without misgiving to go on ascribing absolute perfection to the author and ruler of so clumsily made and capriciously governed a creation as this planet and the life of its inhabitants;" and (3), That "mankind can perfectly well do without the belief in a heaven." "It seems to me not only possible, but probable, that in a higher, and, above all, a happier condition of human life, not annihilation but immortality may be the burdensome idea; and that human nature, though pleased with the present, and by no means impatient to quit it, would find comfort and not sadness in the thought that it is not chained through eternity to a conscious existence which it cannot be assured that it will always wish to preserve." On this last point more mature reflection brought him to a different and wiser conclusion (see Theism, pp. 249, 250).
Those who wish to study the important subject of the relations of religion and morality will find the following references useful: the last chapter of M. Janet's 'La Morale;' theétudeon "La Morale indépendante" in M. Caro's 'Problèmes de Morale Sociale;' many articles and reviews in M. Renouvier's 'Critique Philosophique;' Martensen's 'Christian Ethics,' §§ 5-14; O. Pfleiderer's 'Moral und Religion;' Luthardt's 'Apologetic Lectureson the Moral Truths of Christianity;' and Bradley's 'Ethical Studies,' pp. 279-305.
Note III., page18.
Ethics of Religious Inquiry.
Much has been written regarding the spirit and temper in which religious truth should be pursued and defended. In a large number of the general treatises both of apologetic and systematic theology, the subject is considered, and not a few essays, lectures, &c., have been specially devoted to it. The greater portion of this literature may, I believe, be forgotten without loss, but there is a part of it which will well repay perusal. The "Oratio de recto Theologi zelo" in the first volume of the 'Opuscula' of Werenfels, is worthy of that tolerant and philosophical divine. Archbishop Leighton's 'Exhortations to Students' exhale from every line a heavenly ether and fragrance. It will be long before Herder's 'Letters on the Study of Theology' are out of date.
Dr Chalmers attached high value to the distinction between the ethics of theology and the objects of theology, and expatiated with great eloquence on the duty which is laid upon men by the probability or even the imagination of a God (Nat. Theol., B. i. ch. i. ii.) "Man is not to blame, if an atheist, because of the want of proof. But he is to blame, if an atheist, because he has shut his eyes. He is not to blame that the evidence for a God has not been seen by him, if no such evidence there were within the field of his observation. But he is to blame if the evidence have not been seen,because he turned away his attention from it. That the question of a God may be unresolved in his mind, all he has to do is to refuse a hearing to the question. He may abide without the conviction of a God, if he so choose. But this his choice is matter of condemnation. To resist God after that He is known, is criminality towards Him; but to be satisfied that He should remain unknown, is like criminality towards Him. There is a moral perversity of spirit with him who is willing, in the midst of many objects of gratification, that there should not be one object of gratitude. It is thus that, even in the ignorance of God, there may be a responsibility towards God. The Discerner of the heart sees whether, for the blessings innumerable wherewith he has strewed the path of every man, He be treated like the unknown benefactor who was diligently sought, or like the unknown benefactor who was never cared for. In respect at least of desire after God, the same distinction of character may be observed between one man and another—whether God be wrapt in mystery, or stand forth in full development to our world. Even though a mantle of deepest obscurity lay over the question of His existence, this would not efface the distinction between the piety on the one hand which laboured and aspired after Him, and the impiety upon the other which never missed the evidence that it did not care for, and so grovelled in the midst of its own sensuality and selfishness. The eye of a heavenly witness is upon all these varieties; and thus, whether it be darkness or whether it be dislike which hath caused a people to be ignorant of God, there is with Him a clear principle of judgment that He can extend even to the outfields of atheism."—(Pp. 72, 73.)
The Rev. Alexander Leitch, in the First Part of his'Ethics of Theism' (1868), discusses in a thoughtful and suggestive manner the following subjects: the reality and universality of the antithesis between truth and error, the legitimate dependence in all cases of belief on knowledge, the responsibility of man for his whole system of belief, the distinction between mystery and contradiction, the distinction between speculative and practical knowledge, the distinction between certainty and probability, the standard of morality, and the claims of reason and faith.
Mr Venn's 'Hulsean Lectures' for 1869 "are intended to illustrate, explain, and work out into some of their consequences, certain characteristics by which the attainment of religious belief is prominently distinguished from the attainment of belief upon most other subjects. These characteristics consist in the multiplicity of the sources from which the evidence for religious belief is derived, and the fact that our emotions contribute their share towards producing conviction."
What I have said in the text ought not to be understood as implying any doubt that men are largely responsible for their beliefs. This I accept as an indubitable truth, although there is great room for difference of opinion as to the limits of the responsibility; but it is a truth which no one party in a discussion has a right to urge as against another party. It is a law over all disputants, and is abused when severed from tolerance and charity. Perhaps it has never been better expounded and enforced than in Dr Pusey's 'Responsibility of the Intellect in Matters of Faith' (1873).
That religious belief is in a great measure conditioned and determined by character is implied in the whole argument of my third lecture. In this fact lies the mainreason why the highest evidence may not produce belief even where there is no conscious dishonesty in those who reject it. A person desirous of working himself fully into the truth in this matter, will find excellent thoughts and suggestions in Dr Newman's 'Fifteen Sermons preached before the University of Oxford, between A.D. 1826 and 1843,' and in Principal Shairp's 'Culture and Religion.'
Note IV., page23.
Traditive Theory of Religion.
Mr Fairbairn makes the following remarks on the theory which traces religion to a primitive revelation: "Although often advanced in the supposed interests of religion, the principle it assumes is most irreligious. If man is dependent on an outer revelation for his idea of God, then he must have what Schelling happily termed 'an original atheism of consciousness.' Religion cannot, in that case, be rooted in the nature of man—must be implanted from without. The theory that would derive man's religion from a revelation is as bad as the theory that would derive it from distempered dreams. Revelation may satisfy or rectify, but cannot create, a religious capacity or instinct; and we have the highest authority for thinking that man was created 'to seek the Lord, if haply he might feel after and find Him'—the finding being by no means dependent on a written or traditional word. If there was a primitive revelation, it must have been—unless the word is used in an unusual and misleading sense—either written or oral. If written, itcould hardly be primitive, for writing is an art, a not very early acquired art, and one which does not allow documents of exceptional value to be easily lost. If it was oral, then either the language for it was created or it was no more primitive than the written. Then an oral revelation becomes a tradition, and a tradition requires either a special caste for its transmission, becomes therefore its property, or must be subjected to multitudinous changes and additions from the popular imagination—becomes, therefore, a wild commingling of broken and bewildering lights. But neither as documentary nor traditional can any traces of a primitive revelation be discovered, and to assume it is only to burden the question with a thesis which renders a critical and philosophic discussion alike impossible."—Studies in the Philosophy of Religion and History, pp. 14, 15.
There is an examination of the same theory in the learned and able work of Professor Cocker of Michigan on 'Christianity and Greek Philosophy' (1875). He argues: 1. "That it is highly improbable that truths so important and vital to man, so essential to the wellbeing of the human race, so necessary to the perfect development of humanity as are the ideas of God, duty, and immortality, should rest on so precarious and uncertain a basis as tradition." 2. "That the theory is altogether incompetent to explain theuniversalityof religious rites, and especially of religious ideas." 3. "That a verbal revelation would be inadequate to convey the knowledge of God to an intelligence purely passive and utterly unfurnished with anya prioriideas or necessary laws of thought."—Pp. 86-96.
A good history of the traditive theory of the diffusion of religion is a desideratum in theological literature.
Note V., page29.
Normal Development of Society.
The truth that social development ought to combine and harmonise permanence and progress, liberty and authority, the rights of the individual and of the community, has been often enforced and illustrated. The earnestness with which Comte did so in both of his chief works is well known. A philosopher of a very different stamp, F. v. Baader, has in various of his writings given expression to profound thoughts on the subject. His essay entitled 'Evolutionismus und Revolutionismus des gesellschaftlichen Lebens' merits to be specially mentioned. Alexander Vinet has often been charged with a one-sided individualism, and perhaps not altogether without justice; but he always maintained that he was merely the advocate of individuality. "Individualism and individuality are two sworn enemies; the first being the obstacle and negation of all society—the second, that to which society owes all it possesses of savour, life, and reality. Nowhere does individualism prosper more easily than where there is an absence of individuality; and there is no more atomistic policy than that of despotism." Vinet has probably not held the balance exactly poised between the individual and society; but his dissertations, 'Sur l'individualité et l'individualisme' and 'Du rôle de l'individualité dans une réforme sociale,' would have been far less valuable than they are if he had forgotten that, although it is the individual who thinks, the thought of the individual cannot form itself outside of society nor without its aid. But he did not, as words like the following sufficiently prove:—"Itis better to connect ourselves with society than to learn to dispense with it, or rather to persuade ourselves that we are able to dispense with it. It is only given to the brute to suffice to itself. Man has been chained to man. We hardly give more credit to spontaneous generation in the intellectual sphere than in the physical world; the most individual work is to a certain point the work of all the world; everywheresolidarityreappears, without, however, any prejudice to liberty: God has willed it so." "It is with the soul engaged in the life of religion, or that of thought, as with the vessel launched upon the waters, and seeking beyond the ocean for the shores of a new world. This ocean is society, religious or civil. It bears us just as the ocean does—fluid mass, on which the vessel can indeed trace furrows, but may nowhere halt. The ocean bears the ship, but the ocean may swallow it up, and sometimes does so; society swallows us up still more often, but yet it is what upbears us; nor can we arrive without being upborne by it, for it is like the sea, which, less fluid than the air, and less dense than the earth, just yields to and resists us enough to sustain without impeding our progress towards the desired goal." There are no finer pages in Martensen's 'Christian Ethics' than those in which he treats of "individualism and socialism," "liberty and authority in the development of society," and "conservatism and progress." The most adequate historical proof and illustration of the truth in question as to the nature of social evolution will be found in the Earl of Crawford's 'Progression by Antagonism' and 'Scepticism and the Church of England.'
Note VI., page32.
Definition and Classification by the Highest Type.
Dr Whewell maintained that in natural history groups are fixed not by definition, but by type. "The class," he wrote, "is steadily fixed, though not precisely limited; it is given, though not circumscribed; it is determined not by a boundary-line without, but by a central point within; not by what it strictly excludes, but by what it eminently includes; by an example, not by a precept; in short, instead of Definition we have a Type for our director. A type is an example of any class—for instance, a species of a genus—which is considered as eminently possessing the characters of the class. All the species which have a greater affinity with this type-species than with any others form the genus, and are ranged about it, deviating from it in various directions and different degrees."—Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, vol. i. pp. 476, 477. Dr Whewell, it will be observed, was more cautious in his language than the theologians to whom I have referred. He did not speak of defining by type, but only of classifying, not by definition, but by type. His motive, however, for entertaining the view he laid down, was obviously the same which has led so many theologians to give definitions of religion which are only applicable to its highest forms. Probably it was insufficient. Prof. Huxley (Lay Sermons, pp. 90-92) very justly, it seems to me, argues that classification by type is caused by ignorance, and that as soon as the mind gets a scientific knowledge of a class it defines. Nothing which is not precisely limitedis steadily fixed; nothing which is not circumscribed is exactly given: if the boundary-line is not determined, the central point cannot be accurately ascertained; what is eminently included cannot be known so long as what is strictly excluded is unknown. While assenting to the view of Prof. Huxley in the passage indicated, I may remark that he falls into one error which rather forcibly illustrates what is said in the page to which this note refers regarding the necessary poverty of the significance of a strictly scientific definition of an extensive class. He instances as a definition which is of a truly scientific kind and "rigorous enough for a geometrician," the following: "Mammalia are all animals which have a vertebrated skeleton and suckle their young." But clearly this definition says too much if we are to criticise it rigorously. Were it true, there would be no males among mammalia. The definition is in strictness applicable to females only.
Note VII., page38.
Psychological Nature of Religion.
In this note I shall briefly summarise three class lectures on the psychological nature of religion.
1. Investigations into the psychological nature of religion date only from about the end of last century.
For ages previously men sought to know what religion was; but they attempted to find an answer merely by reflection on positive or objective religion. Kant opened up to them a new path—that of investigation into the nature of religion as an internal or mental fact. O. Pfleiderer's account (Die Religion, pp. 5-124) of the researches thus started characterised, and criticised.
2. The testimony of consciousness is sufficient to establish the existence of religion as a subjective or mental state, but cannot certify whether, as such, it be simple or complex, primary or derivative, coextensive with human consciousness, or wider or narrower, or whether there be anything objectively corresponding to it.
3. In order to analyse religion, the ultimate genera of consciousness must be ascertained, which has only been slowly done. History of the process: Plato, Aristotle, their followers, Descartes, Spinoza, the English philosophers from Bacon to Dugald Stewart, Kant and the German psychologists, Brown, Hamilton, and Bain. Establishment of the threefold division of mental phenomena into cognitions, emotions, and volitions. Difficulties of the division shown by the author in 'Mind,' No. V.
Religion must be a state of intellect, sensibility, or will, or some combination of two or all of these factors.
4. Religion may be held to consist essentially and exclusively of knowledge; but this mistake is too gross to have been frequently committed.
The Gnostics, the earlier and scholastic theologians, the rationalists, Schelling and Cousin, have been charged with this error. The grounds of the charge indicated. Shown to be in all these cases exaggerated.
5. Schleiermacher refutes the theory by the consideration that the measure of our knowledge is not the measure of our religion.
Vindication and illustration of his argument. Service rendered by Schleiermacher to religion and theology in this connection.
6. Hegel came nearest to the identification of religion and thought, maintaining that sentiment was the lowest manifestation of religion, while the comprehension ofthe absolute, the highest knowledge, was its complete realisation, as also that religion was the self-consciousness of God through the mediation of the finite spirit.
Exposition and criticism of this theory. Examination of Vera's defence of it. Worship supposes two persons morally and spiritually as well as intellectually related.
7. While no mere intellectual act constitutes religion, the exercise of reason is an essential part of religion.
The denial of this an error prevalent among the modern theologians of Germany, owing to their accepting Kant's argumentation against the possibility of apprehending God by the speculative or pure reason as conclusive. If religion have no rational foundation, it has no real foundation. Reason does not apprehend merely what is finite. True place of reason in religion.
8. Religion has often been resolved into feeling or sentiment, but erroneously, since whatever feeling is fixed on requires some explanation of its existence, and this can only be found in some act or exercise of intellect.
9. Epicurus, Lucretius, and Hume have traced religion to fear.
10. Fear explains atheism better than it explains religion, and in order even to be feared God must be believed in.
Men fear a great many things. Mere fear founds nothing, but only causes efforts to avoid the presence or thought of its object. Fear enters into religion, and is filial in the higher, and servile in the lower, forms of religion.
11. Feuerbach resolves religion into desire—into an ignorant and illusive personification of man's own nature as he would wish it to be.
12. This view presupposes the truth of atheism, doesnot explain why man should refer to supramundane ends or objects, and is contradicted by the historical facts, which show that reason and conscience have at least co-operated with desire in the origination and development of religion.
13. Schleiermacher resolves religion into a feeling of absolute dependence—of pure and complete passiveness.
Statement of his theory. Shown to rest on a pantheistic conception of the Divine Being. His reduction of the Divine attributes intopower.
14. No such feeling can exist, the mind being incapable of experiencing a feeling of nothingness—a consciousness of unconsciousness.
15. Could it be supposed to exist, it would have no religious character, because wholly blind and irrational.
16. The theory of Schleiermacher makes the moral and religious consciousness subversive of each other, the former affirming and the latter denying our freedom and responsibility.
17. Mansel supposes the religious consciousness to be traceable to the feeling of dependence and the conviction of moral obligation; but the latter feeling implies the perception of moral law, and is not religious unless there be also belief in a moral lawgiver.
18. Schenkel represents conscience as 'the religious organ of the soul,' but this is not consistent with the fact that conscience is the faculty which distinguishes right from wrong.
Schenkel's view of conscience shown to make its religious testimony contradict its ethical testimony.
19. Strauss combines the views of Epicurus, Feuerbach, and Schleiermacher; but three errors do not make a truth.
Account of the criticism to which the Straussian theory of religion has been subjected by Vera, Ulrici, and Professor H. B. Smith.
20. Although there can be no true religion without love, and although to love the true God with the whole heart is the ideal of religion, religion cannot be resolved exclusively into love; since love presupposes knowledge, and is not the predominant feeling, if present at all, in the lower forms of religion.
21. Religion includes will, implying the free and deliberate surrender of the soul to God,—the making self an instrument where it might, although wrongfully, have been made an end,—but it is not merely will, since all volition, properly so called, presupposes reason and feeling.
22. Kant made religion merely a sanction for duty, and duty the expression of a will which is its own law, and which is unaffected by feeling; but this view rested on erroneous conceptions as to (1) the relation of religion and morality, (2) the nature of the will, and (3) the place of feeling in the mental economy.
Religion and morality inseparable in their normal conditions; but not to be identified, religion being communion with God, while morality is conformity to a law which is God's will but which may not be acknowledged to be His will, so that they may and do exist in abnormal forms apart from each other.
The will has not its law in itself. Kant's errors on this subject.
Feeling is the natural and universal antecedent of action. Kant's errors on this subject.
23. Dr Brinton (Religious Sentiment, &c., 1876) analyses religion into emotion and idea—an effective and intellectual element—the latter of which arises necessarilyfrom the law of contradiction and excluded middle.
Merits and defects of his theory.
24. The religious process is at once rational, emotional, and volitional.
Its unity, and the co-operation of knowing, feeling, and willing.
25. Description of (1) its essential contents, (2) its chief forms, (3) its principal moments or stages, and (4) its manifestations in spiritual worship and work.