NOTE ONE

THE THEOLOGY OF FEELING

DEPENDENCE upon feeling for religion is not confined to the emotional excitation of what are called Revival Meetings among the masses, or in its more refined forms to the rhapsodies of the mystics, which are mistaken by them for spiritual revelation. Belief in feeling as the organ of religious knowledge, as against reason, based upon a supposed distinction between the intellectual and emotional elements, is common in religious thought and moulds certain systems of theology.

In many writers it takes the form of a direct repudiation of reason either in Natural or Revealed religion.

Browning who is a religious teacher, as well as a poet, says, with reference to the search after God,

"I found Him not in world or sun,

Or eagle's wing or insect's eye;

Nor thro' the questions men may try,
The petty cobwebs we have spun."

But let us

These furnish no clue to the mystery. We find no voice of reason in Nature to answer to the reason within us. throw reason and faith, which is dependent upon it, overboard, and seek another way.

"If e'er when faith had fall'n asleep,

I heard a voice believe no more,'
And heard an ever breaking shore
That tumbled in the Godless deep;

"A warmth within the breast would melt
The freezing reason's colder part;
And like a man in wrath the heart
Stood up and answered I have felt.'"

-In Memoriam.

Or again in the passage frequently quoted,

"So let us say-not Since we know we love,'
But rather, Since we love we know enough.”

This is poetry which has identified the metaphorical form in which it clothes itself with reality. Feeling is in its very nature subjective, and must be directed to an object. Love must know the object it loves, and in every act of loving recognizes the reasons for loving. Emotion neither reveals nor creates an object, but it is the consequent of an object revealed. Feeling cannot produce truth, but it springs up the moment the truth is made known to it. Reason, knowledge must dominate feeling, otherwise as John Caird says, "feeling is at sea." Animals feel, but the feeling ends with themselves. The attempt to separate feeling from reason and conscience deprives it of implicit elements which render it incapable of apprehending either religion or morality. A moment's reflection leads to the admission that reason, emotion and will are organically united and indissoluble in religion.

The misapprehension in Browning and many other writers is due to confining the conception of reason to the process of reasoning, that is to the understanding. Reasoning or demonstration can never bring a man to a religious or moral life. Botany, which describes each stage of a growing plant, can never produce a living plant. Psychology can never produce a mind. Reason in the comprehensive sense is implicit in all of the faculties, a balance wheel, the condition of their harmonious activity.

It is not intended to regard feeling with suspicion or as a neglectable quantity in the philosophy of religion. Feeling conceived of as having in it, as implicit and inseparable from it, reason and faith, is indeed the all of religion, the active and central power of the gospel. "Love is of God, and he that loveth is born of God and knoweth God." Bishop Butler, whose great powers were dedicated to proving Christianity to be reasonable, assigns to feeling a position of supreme importance. In his sermons on the love of God, he condemns ecstasy and extravagance of emotionalism as abnormal and illusive; but on the other hand, he has no patience with those who hold that religion is all reason and no feeling, "under the notion of a reasonable religion, so very

reasonable as to have nothing to do with the heart and the affections."

Feeling, comprehending reason, faith and hope, is the love delineated by St. Paul, the spirit breathing through the New Testament.

NOTE TWO

THE THEOLOGY OF THE WILL

PHILOSOPHY is sensitive to psychology, and theology in its essence is the philosophy of religion, and therefore must respond to influences from the views we hold about the different faculties of our minds, and the share of each in our mental operations as they appear in consciousness. Dr. James, of Harvard, contributes from psychology, his special science, his theory of belief in religion to strengthen the theology of the will.

He has the rare merit of translating religious and philosophical speculation into language and illustration comprehensible to minds of ordinary education. It must be remembered, in reading his book, that he is lecturing to a body of students and to a popular audience.

"

Upon religion, as an act of choice, he has the following admirable passage. 'Religion is a forced option We cannot escape the issue by remaining sceptical and waiting for more light, because, although we do avoid error in that way if religion be untrue, we lose the good if it be true, just as certainly as if we positively choose to disbelieve. It is as if a man should hesitate indefinitely to ask a certain woman to marry him because he was not perfectly sure that she would prove an angel after he brought her home. Would he not cut himself off from that particular angel-possibly as decisively as if he went and married some one else? Scepticism then is not an avoidance of option; it is option of a certain particular kind of risk. Better risk loss of truth than chance of error, that is your faith-vetoer's exact position."

Again in "Is Life Worth Living?" "faith makes result come true. Not a victory is gained, not a deed of faithfulness or courage is done except upon a maybe ; not a service, not a sally

of generosity, not a scientific exploration, or experiment, or textbook, that may not be a mistake. It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true. Suppose, for instance, that you are climbing a mountain, and have worked yourself into a position from which the only escape is a terrible leap. Have faith that you can make it, and your feet are nerved to its accomplishment. But mistrust yourself and think of all the sweet things you have heard the scientists say of maybes, and you will hesitate so long that, at last all unstrung and trembling, and launching yourself in a moment of despair, you roll into the abyss. In such a case (and it belongs to an enormous class), the part of wisdom as well as of courage, is to believe what is in the line of your needs, for only by such belief is the need fulfilled. Refuse to believe, and you shall indeed be right, for you shall irretrievably perish. But believe, and again you shall be right, for you shall save yourself. You make one or the other of two possible universes true or untrue by your trust or mistrust; both universes having been only maybes, in this particular, before you contribute your act."

Doubtless the function of the will in the formation of beliefs, is destined to wider recognition than it has yet received, and the advance in this department of psychology will contribute abundant illustration to exposition of Scripture. But a religious philosophy which designates the will as the master, and the other faculties of the mind as servants which may be dispensed with at pleasure, is one which may justify antinomianism, or extreme individualism in religion, where every man may claim to believe whatever he chooses to believe, and be church and creed and an objective revelation to himself. The faculties of the mind are dependent and cooperative. Will, faith, reason, conscience and authority, are all represented in every act of decision. The will does not move in the direction of religion except under the impulse of moral and spiritual affinities. Behind the will is the spiritual intelligence, the conscience and the sense of need. If these are not, the will is motionless. John Caird says, "The conflict of nature and spirit, of impulse and reason, of the lower and the higher self, is one from which, for a rational and self-conscious being, there can be