is;;] THEOLOGY AND THE CHURCH 311 



who has not got at it as the last result of an elaborate 

 criticism of all religious ideas, who has not satisfied him 

 self, by a strictly philosophical inquiry, that the tran 

 scendental convictions of Christianity are not the true 

 mainsprings of Christian life, but simply an illogical 

 projection into the superhuman sphere of notions, which 

 have always had their reality and power only in im 

 manent relations of a region purely human. When the 

 assertion that theology perishes but religion remains 

 passes from mouth to mouth, among men who have no 

 pretensions to have even looked at these difficult problems 

 of the philosophy of religion, who, being either destitute 

 of all habits of exact thought or occupied only with purely 

 physical science, do not possess the most elementary 

 qualifications for the researches which alone can give 

 their words a meaning, in the mouths of such men 

 the formula in question is nothing more than a cant 

 phrase, which decently veils pretentious ignorance, or 

 nothing less than a disguise of affected sentiment cast 

 over the nakedness of shamefaced atheism. 



Thus if we set aside, on the one hand, the objections 

 drawn from a mysticism too exaggerated to deserve 

 serious refutation, and, on the other hand, those derived 

 from that old-fashioned atheism which, in its plain- 

 spoken contempt for all religion, can so easily be proved 

 unhistorical that even its friends are glad to disguise it 

 in scraps of new-fashioned philosophy, if we set both 

 these classes of objections aside, it appears that the 

 only serious attack which can be made on theology as a 

 whole must proceed from a system of the philosophy of 

 religion not less elaborate in construction than Christian 

 theology itself. The right of theology to exist can no 

 longer be disputed in limine. The contest must now be 

 between the developed systems of the philosophy of 

 Christianity and the philosophy of the religion of 

 humanity. Each of these systems must base its argu 

 ment, not merely on speculative considerations, but on 



