RELIGION WITHOUT DOGMA. 61 



loss which attends the translation of sentiment into organization may 

 perhaps be exemplified in the case of our instinct for justice. That 

 instinct, one with the love of truth, in its expression as a means of 

 self-protection against wrong, has given rise to law and the courts. 

 Are the results of their processes such as to awaken the reverence 

 which the sentiment of justice compels? The discrepancy between 

 religious feeling and ecclesiasticism ; the love of right and law, as 

 practically enacted and executed, suggests the parallel gap which 

 philosophers and poets have so often mourned the gulf between 

 thought and language, which leaves music to suggest much that in 

 speech must remain inarticulate. The great artists of the world, 

 whose masterpieces fill the generations with wonder, have lamented 

 how far execution has lagged behind conception. The supreme dram- 

 atist does not seem to have thought his work sufficiently valuable to 

 take any special care to hand it down to posterity. 



Religious feeling by its arrival at the theistic idea has done man- 

 kind incalculable service. How potent the thought that the universe 

 is one, and represents one uncontradicted will ! How influential for 

 good the thought that a Supreme Mind, too great to be deceived, and 

 absolutely righteous, knows every thought and act ! " Thou God seest 

 me," has, I think, restrained evil in the mind of conscientious theists, 

 with a directness which might have been denied to reflections as to 

 consequence. It is not because some of us may be dissatisfied with 

 theology that we fail to recognize its value in the past and present. 

 Associated with moral codes, it has impressed them on minds unfit by 

 immaturity for the responsibilities of freedom, and by dogmatic force 

 has doubtless given stability to order. Not because the Gods of the 

 sects seem crude and imperfect conceptions are we to expect that the 

 religious feeling which gave rise to all these will die out in man. It 

 will, I believe, from age to age, go on endeavoring to form a theory 

 which shall explain the facts of human life and universal Nature, which 

 shall impress the imagination and influence the will. 



One result of science will be profoundly influential here its arrival 

 at the idea of Law, its perception of uniformity and constancy in Na- 

 ture ; the proof which, in large part, it now possesses, that the history 

 of the universe, from nebular mist to man, illustrates causation and 

 continuity. This idea, excluding as it does the miraculous and the 

 supernatural, leads us to regard the history of the universe as an un- 

 broken and consistent unfolding. In this view, every item of knowl- 

 edge we attain is secure from any interference from break in the 

 natural order. We are incited to explore relations which are un- 

 changeable. The sense of supreme mystery will grow as the margin 

 of the known expands and touches larger and larger circles of the un- 

 known ; but any territory we may win we will feel sure of retaining. 

 And, although our knowledge may not be either wide or deep, still 

 much of it will doubtless be regarded as valuable and important 



