262 ESSAYS /AT PHILOSOPHY 



this objection would enforce it, too, by recalling our 

 attention to the fact, that, in the very beginnings of 

 this issue, we confronted the assertion — maintained 

 by one great religious school — that reason is intrinsi- 

 cally incompetent to religion, because its judgments, 

 however conclusive and infallible in its own field, 

 are limited to that field, which is the world of sense- 

 experience only, and not in the least the world of 

 supersensible and spiritual reality. Our vindication 

 of Rationalism will accordingly not be complete till 

 we have grappled with this contention common to 

 the religious dogmatist and the agnostic, and made 

 an end of it by showing not only that the opposite 

 is true, but that its truth is implied in this contention 

 itself. 



I am not the least disposed to evade this indi- 

 cation of a needed completion to our argument. 

 Rather, I willingly grant the point as correctly 

 made, and I cordially take up the task which I 

 accepted at the outset as part of this hour's duty, 

 namely, to show that reason is not confined in its 

 judgments to the things of sense, but extends also 

 to the things invisible, — to all the things of the 

 spirit, the things of religion. 



In entering upon this final stage in our dis- 

 cussion, it is only fair to take the preparatory 

 advantage of noticing that the very parties which 

 discredit reason and maintain the cause of author- 



