TEACHING OF RELIGION AND MORALITY 287 



This dictum of Paulsen's leads to a second note regarding the kind 

 of belief that will count for morality. For if belief is an affair 

 primarily of the heart and the will; if, as Professor James says, 

 " will and belief are two names for one and the same psychological 

 phenomenon; " and if " belief consists in an emotional reaction of 

 the entire man on an object; " it follows that to believe that which 

 leaves us cold and unmoved is a psychological impossibility. Belief 

 in that which we cannot act on that which makes no practical 

 demand upon us is inconceivable. We have no use for a belief 

 which we cannot use. Per contra, it is inconceivable that we should 

 persistently act on something, or even be vitally interested in it, 

 without finally believing in it. 



It is the greatest of errors in religious education to suppose, and to 

 act on the supposition, that belief is an affair primarily of the reason; 

 that beliefs are to be reasoned out, reached through reason. No one 

 ever believed because of proofs addressed to the understanding. 



A child believes in God because he has from infancy been taught to 

 pray to God at his mother's knee; because his home life is lived in 

 practical recognition of a heavenly Father; because in church he 

 joins in public worship, and learns and loves to say " I believe in God 

 the Father," before he begins to know what belief is, or what his words 

 fully imply; and because at far back as he can possibly remember, 

 God, the loving heavenly Father, has formed the background of his 

 life. The same is true of every other fundamental belief. Which 

 of them all has been arrived at by argument? Which of them not 

 by living in the presence of the fact? 



Here, if anywhere, appears the weakness of Socrates' dictum, 

 Virtue is knowledge; and the strength of Aristotle's saying, Virtue is 

 practice and habit. Beliefs arrived at in any other way than through 

 deed, use, and life, and the immediate certainty of the heart springing 

 therefrom, are not only less firm and less practical, but they are not 

 even beliefs. If we were to conceive of religious belief as a squaring 

 of ideas by certain standards, as an acceptance of certain views of 

 truth, as in the Quicunque vult, then the net result for morality of such 

 religious belief would be such as is wont to spring from intellectual 

 enlightenment, or darkening. If seeing what 'twere well to do 

 were tantamount to doing it, it would suffice for purposes of moral- 

 ity to convince the intellect. But mere knowledge is not conduct. 

 Morality must be met on its own ground, that is, in the sphere of 

 action. If belief is to reach behavior, it must have its roots in be- 

 havior. It must be an experience which has arisen less when we 

 were saying something than when we were doing something. In lay- 

 ing the foundations of faith, action should precede explanations; 

 there should be first the service, and afterwards the answer to the 

 question, " What mean ye by this service ?" 



