272 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 



a strong motive and a great incentive, of the moral life. Such a con- 

 ception will not make the moral will unfree but truly free, not in the 

 sense of a selfish choice, but in the sense of a love that serves, knowing 

 itself as an instrument of the divine will, who binds us all into a 

 social organism, the kingdom of God. And, on the other hand, the 

 more ideal the moral view of life, the higher and greater its aims, 

 the more it recognizes its great task to care for the welfare not only 

 of the individual but of all, to cooperate in the welfare and develop- 

 ment of all forms of society, the more earnestly the moral mind will 

 need a sincere faith that this is God's world, that above all the 

 changes of time an eternal will is on the throne, whose all-wise guid- 

 ance causes everything to be for the best unto those who love him. 

 A like middle position of arbitration falls to the philosophy of 

 religion in the matter of the relation of religion to science. The 

 first demand of science is freedom of thought, according to its own 

 logical laws, and its fundamental assumption is the possibility of 

 the knowledge of the world on the basis of the unchangeable laws 

 of all existence and events. With this fundamental demand science 

 places itself in opposition to the formal character of ecclesiastical 

 doctrine so far as the doctrine claims infallible authority resting 

 upon a divine revelation. And the fundamental assumption of the 

 regular law of the course of the world is in opposition to the contents 

 of ecclesiastical doctrine concerning the miraculous interposition 

 in the course of nature and of history. To the superficial observer 

 there appears therefore to exist an irreconcilable conflict between 

 science and religion. Here is the work of the philosophy of religion, 

 to take away the appearance of an irreconcilable opposition between 

 science and religion, in that the philosophy of religion teaches first 

 of all to distinguish between the essence of religion and the ecclesias- 

 tical doctrines of a certain religion, and to comprehend the historical 

 origin of these doctrines in the forms of thought of past times. To 

 this purpose the method of psychological analysis and of historical 

 comparison mentioned above is of service. When, then, by this 

 critical process religion is traced to its real essence in the emotional 

 consciousness of God, to which the dogmatic doctrines stand as 

 secondary products and varied symbols, then it remains to show 

 that between the essence of religion and that which science demands 

 and presupposes, there exists not conflict but harmony. When the 

 idea of God is recognized as the synthesis of the ideas of the true 

 and the good, so then must all truth as sought by science, even as the 

 highest good, which the system of ethics places as the purpose of all 

 action - - these must be recognized as the revelation of God in his 

 eternal reason and goodness. The laws of our rational thinking 

 then cannot be in conflict with divine revelation in history, and the 

 laws of the natural order of the world can no more stand in conflict 



