THE SABBATH. 247 



children of Israel received without idealization the statements of their 

 great law-giver. To them the tables of the law were true tablets of 

 stone, prepared, engraved, broken, and reengraved ; while the graving- 

 tool which inscribed the law was held undoubtingly to be the finger 

 of God. To us such conceptions are impossible. We may by habit 

 use the words, but we attach to them no definite meaning. " As the 

 religious education of the world advances," says Principal Caird, " it 

 becomes impossible to attach any literal meaning to those represen- 

 tations of God and his relations to mankind which ascribe to him 

 human senses, appetites, passions, and the actions and experiences 

 proper to man's lower and finite nature." 



Principal Caird, nevertheless, ascribes to this imaging of the Unseen 

 a special value and significance, regarding it as furnishing an objective 

 counterpart to religious emotion, permanent but plastic capable of 

 indefinite change and purification in response to the changing moods 

 and aspirations of mankind. It is solely on this mutable element that 

 he fixes his attention in estimating the religious character of Individ- 

 uals or nations. " Here," he says, " the fundamental inquiry is as to 

 the objective character of their religious ideas or beliefs. The first 

 question is, not how they feel, but what they think and believe ; not 

 whether their religion manifests itself in emotions more or less vehe- 

 ment or enthusiastic, but what are the conceptions of God and divine 

 things by which these emotions are called forth ? " These conceptions 

 " of God and divine things " were, it is admitted, once " materialistic 

 and figurative," and therefore objectively untrue. Nor is their purer 

 essence yet distilled ; for the religious education of the world still 

 " advances," and is, therefore, incomplete. Hence the essentially flux- 

 ional character of that objective counterpart to religious emotion to 

 which Principal Caird attaches most importance. He, moreover, as- 

 sumes that the emotion is called forth by the conception. We have 

 doubtless action and reaction here ; but it may be questioned whether 

 the conception, which is a construction of the human understanding, 

 could be at all put together without materials drawn from the experi- 

 ence of the human heart.* 



The changes of conception here adverted to have not always been 

 peacefully brought about. The " transmutation " of the old beliefs 

 was often accompanied by conflict and suffering. It was conspicuously 

 so during the passage from paganism to Christianity. In his work 

 entitled "L'Eglise Chretienne," Renan describes the sufferings of a 

 group of Christians at Smyrna which may be taken as typical. The 

 victims were cut up by the lash till the inner tissues of their bodies 



* While reading the volume of Principal Caird I was reminded more than once of 

 the following passage in Kenan's " Antechrist " : " Et d'ailleurs, quel est I'homme vrai- 

 ment religieux qui repudie completement I'enseignement traditionnel eI I'ombre duquel 

 il sentit d'abord I'ideal, qui ne cherche pas les conciliations, souvent impossibles, entre 

 sa vieille foi et celle k laquelle il est arrive par le progres de sa pensee ? " 



