352 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



47. But a question of considerable importance has arisen 



Natural 



Religion. i n reference to that body of doctrine which during 

 the last two hundred years has sprung up and been 

 cultivated under various names such as Natural 

 Keligion, Deism, or Rationalism. This doctrine pro- 

 fesses to be based upon the ordinary and common 

 experience of thinking persons, assisted in various ways 

 by scientific reasoning and the outcome of historical 

 research. It professes to collect, contain, and sub- 

 stantiate the principal and most important tenets of 

 Christian ethics, but to dispense with the assistance of 

 any special revelation other than that afforded by common- 

 sense, philosophical reasoning, and the natural feeling of 

 obligation commonly termed the voice of conscience. This 

 body of doctrine was elaborated with more or less 

 fulness and consistency in the eighteenth century, and 

 found many adherents, especially among the cultured 

 classes, among literary and scientific persons in England, 

 France, and latterly also in Germany. It called itself 

 Deism or, later, Theism the difference in general being 

 that the former believes only in what is called a Divine 

 or moral Order, whereas the latter considers this Divine 

 Order to culminate in and be dependent on a personal 

 Deity. Recent speculation in Germany, notably in the 

 school of Ritschl, does not admit that such a natural re- 

 ligion can be satisfactorily elaborated and maintained ; it 

 holds, further, that whatever may be correct and spiritu- 

 ally helpful in such a doctrine, requires some higher 

 sanction which will prevent it from succumbing on the 

 one side to the attacks of logical criticism, and on the 

 other to the selfish interests of human beings : it must, 



