368 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION AND MORALS. 



end profoundly mysterious as well as regular in all her 

 ways. Religion discerns a purpose through the course 

 of evolution which Science shows a purpose sometimes 

 dark and shrouded, but again revealed, and which is 

 for her accordingly the chief article of unshaken faith. 

 Religion discerns in Nature, and the Power which she 

 divines behind Nature, both the present support and the 

 final disposer of all; that on which we are in the end 

 dependent for all things for life, for thought, for happi- 

 ness, now and hereafter, if such hereafter we are to have. 

 Thus it is from Religion, reinforced by Science and 

 Art, that we get the complete conception of Nature, and 

 of God the purpose within it and the mystery at the 

 bottom of it. But if, as Schliermacher contends, we 

 separate the notion of God from that of the universe, 

 we have only a name for that portion of the total con- 

 ception which is inexplicable, and which contains the 

 mysterious and unknowable quantity; if we do not 

 separate the notions, then is God identical with Nature 

 or the Cosmos, plus the final mystery, where, however, 

 only the first part of the conception, the cosmos itself, 

 has any real and positive signification for our minds. 



