RIGHT RELATION OF REASON TO RELIGION 233 



hearer is supposed to recognise as divine. In the 

 case of the Middle Doctrine, it commits the incon- 

 sistency of calHng to the aid of incompetent reason 

 the still more incompetent and still less spiritual 

 powers of sense, but powers human nevertheless. 



But, in fact, the entire theory of external evidence 

 for Divine Revelation is shown by comparative studies 

 to be a survival from the religious consciousness of 

 primitive times, when men really believed that God 

 could be clothed in a limited body, and could be 

 present in a specific space at a given time, and be 

 seen and heard quite as a man or any other being 

 with a body is. It is a survival despite the declared 

 abandonment of this sensuous view of God, and can 

 only be explained by supposing negligence — a want 

 of critical attention to the consistencies of the 

 spiritual view of God that we all now profess. For 

 such sense-given evidence is manifestly incompati- 

 ble with the doctrine of reason and of Christ, that 

 God is Spirit and is not to be truly worshipped in 

 Mount Gerizim, or even in Jerusalem, but only in 

 the spirit. It is not consistent with the spiritual 

 infinity and true omnipresence reasonably attributed 

 by all Christians to God. 



Secondly, I hold the Method of Authority to be 

 invalid because it is impossible to make it intelli- 

 gibly out : in obedience to its plausible lead, we 

 search from one point to another of the asserted 



