446 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



is a metaphysical disease of the age. And there is no reason that 

 philosophers should accept this hysterical piece of transcendentalism, 

 and assume that they have found the field of religion when they have 

 found a field for unquenchable yearning after infinity. Wonder has 

 its place in religion, and so has mystery ; but it is a subordinate place. 

 The roots and fibers of religion are to be found in love, awe, sympa- 

 thy, gratitude, consciousness of inferiority and of dependence, com- 

 munity of will, acceptance of control, manifestation of purpose, rever- 

 ence for majesty, goodness, creative energy, and life. Where these 

 things are not, religion is not.. 



Let us take each one of these three elements of religion — belief, 

 worship, conduct — and try them all in turn as applicable to the Un- 

 knowable. How mere a phrase must any religion be of which neither 

 belief, nor worship, nor conduct can be spoken ! Imagine a religion 

 which can have no believers, because, ex hypothesi, its adepts are for- 

 bidden to believe anything about it. Imagine a religion which ex- 

 cludes the idea of worship, because its sole dogma is the infinity of 

 Nothingness. Although the Unknowable is logically said to be Some- 

 thing, yet the something of which we neither know nor conceive any- 

 thing is practically nothing. Lastly, imagine a religion which can 

 have no relation to conduct ; for obviously the Unknowable can give 

 us no intelligible help to conduct, and ex vi termini can have no bear- 

 ing on conduct. A religion which could not make any one any better, 

 which would leave the human heart and human society just as it found 

 them, which left no foothold for devotion, and none for faith ; which 

 could have no creed, no doctrines, no temples, no priests, no teachers,, 

 no rites, no morality, no beauty, no hope, no consolation ; which is 

 summed up in one dogma — the Unknowable is everywhere, and Evo- 

 lution is its prophet — this is indeed " to defecate religion to a pure 

 transparency." 



The growing weakness of religion has long been that it is being 

 thrust inch by inch off the platform of knowledge ; and we watch 

 with sympathy the desperate efforts of all religious spirits to maintain 

 the relations between knowledge and religion. And now it hears the 

 invitation of Evolution to abandon the domain of knowledge, and 

 to migrate to the domain of no-knowledge. The true Rock of Ages, 

 says the philosopher, is the Unknowable. To the eye of Faith all 

 things are henceforth kKaraXTi-^ia, as Cicero calls it. The paradox 

 would hardly be greater if we were told that true religion consisted 

 in unlimited Vice. 



What is religion for ? Why do we want it ? And what do we ex- 

 pect it to do for us ? If it can give us no sure ground for our minds to 

 rest on, nothing to purify the heart, to exalt the sense of sympathy, to 

 deepen our sense of beauty, to strengthen our resolves, to chasten us 

 into resignation, and to kindle a spirit of self-sacrifice — what is the 

 good of it ? The Unknowable, ex hypothesis can do none of these 



