450 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



an idea, that can only be expressed by the formula (.r") ; and which by 

 the hypothesis can have nothing to do with either knowledge, belief, 

 sympathy, hope, life, duty, or happiness ? It is not religion, this. It 

 is a logician's artifice to escape from an awkward dilemma. 



One word in conclusion to tliose who would see religion a working 

 reality, and not a logical artifice. The startling reductio ad absurdum 

 of relegating religion to the unknowable is only the last step in the 

 process which has gradually reduced religion to an incomprehensible 

 minimum. And this has been the work of theologians obstinately 

 fighting a losing battle, and withdrawing at every defeat into a more 

 impregnable and narrower fastness. They have thrown over one after 

 another the claims of religion and the attributes of divinity. They are 

 so hopeless of continuing the contest on the open field of the known 

 that they more and more seek to withdraw to the cloud-world of the 

 transcendental. They are so terribly afraid of an anthropomorphic 

 God that they have sublimated him into a metaphorical expression — 

 " defecated the idea to a pure transparency," as one of the most emi- 

 nent of them puts it. Dean Mansel is separated from Mr. Spencer by 

 degree, not in kind. And now they are pushed by Evolution into the 

 abyss, and are solemnly assured that the reconciliation of Religion and 

 Science is effected by this religion of the Unknowable — this chimmra 

 bombinans in vacuo. Their Infinites and their Incomprehensibles, 

 their Absolute and their Unconditioned, have brought them to this. 

 It is only one step from the sublime to the unknowable. 



Practically, so far as it affects the lives of men and women in the 

 battle of life, the absolute and Unconditioned Godhead of learned di- 

 vines is very much the same thing as the Absolute Unknowable. You 

 may rout a logician by a " j^ure transparency," but you can not check 

 vice, crime, and war by it, nor train up men and women in holiness 

 and truth. And the set of all modern theology is away from the an- 

 thropomorphic and into the Absolute. In trying to save a religion of 

 the spirit-world, theologians are abandoning all religion of the real 

 world ; they are turning religion into formulas and phrases, and are 

 taking out of it all power over life, duty, and society. 



I say, in a word, unless religion is to be anthropomorphic, there 

 can bo no working religion at all. How strange is this new cry, 

 sprung up in our own generation, that religion is dishonored by being 

 anthropomorphic ! Fetichism, Polytheism, Confucianism, Mediaeval 

 Christianity, and Bible Puritanism have all been intensely anthropo- 

 morphic, and all owed their strength and dominion to that fact. You 

 can have no religion without kinship, sympathy, relation of some 

 human kind between the believer, worshiper, servant, and the object 

 of his belief, veneration, and service. The Neo-Theisms have all the 

 same mortal weakness that the Unknowable has. They offer no kin- 

 ship, sympathy, or relation whatever between worshiper and wor- 

 shiped. They, too, are logical formulas begotten in controversy. 



