RATIONALISTIC CRITICISMS 351 



doctrines and speculations which are based on imagina- 

 tion and vain desire." ^ 



(7) " If by religious truth be meant the doctrines of 

 the existence of God and of human immortality, we 

 think it would be difficult to show that there is any 

 general ' need ' to believe in these things." ^ 



(8) " All faith which is not an inference from know- 

 ledge should be regarded with suspicion and distrust."^ 



No doubt many doctrines or dogmas propounded by 

 the Church in past centuries were based on erroneous 

 interpretations of the Scriptures. These are gradually 

 being eliminated whenever modern scientific investiga- 

 tions into the true meaning of the documents reveal their 

 unsoundness. But there are some which the more they 

 are investigated the sounder appears to be their tena- 

 bility. The two alluded to above, vis., the existence 

 of God, and human immortality ; and we may add man's 

 Will are based on inductive evidence of the highest 

 order ; for the first two are outside the sphere of " ob- 

 servation and experiment ". 



I would, however, maintain that these do come within 

 the range of human knoivledge as much as the Rotation 

 of the Earth ; which cannot be proved to be true by 

 either observation or experiment. According to Ration- 

 alists Ptolemy must have been right, and Copernicus 

 wrong. 



As the opinions of a Monist, Haeckel speaks as 

 follows with regard to the Deity of Christians : — 



(i) " He is always conceived in a more or less human 

 form, as an organism which thinks and acts like a man — ■ 

 only on a much higher scale."* 



" The * Trinity ' is not an original element in Chris- 



ip. 27. 2 p. 28. =* Pp. 33.34. 



•* The Riddle of the Universe, p. 283. 



