190 THE LIGHT OF DAT 



magnetism, and the incentives to noble and heroic 

 living which they had in the fervid exhortations of 

 Paul, or in the calm sweetness of James, and which 

 his reason alone is now to lay hold of, he is shocked 

 and repelled, and is in danger of losing all his reli- 

 gion with the discovery of the unreasonableness of his 

 creed. This is unfortunate, because the only thing 

 real and valuable in religion, the only thing saving 

 in it, is the emotion of Godliness, of tenderness, gen- 

 tleness, purity, mercy, truth. Without these, reli- 

 gion is nothing but a name, and with them the assent 

 of the understanding to a lot of formal propositions 

 about the plans and purposes of the Eternal, about 

 the trinity, or the atonement, or original sin, etc., 

 has nothing to do. There is no connection between 

 these things. Religion is not a matter of reason or 

 of belief any more than poetry is. 



TII 



A tree is known by its fruit, and it may be ob- 

 jected that false ideas in religion cannot be produc- 

 tive of good. But false ideas are and have been 

 productive of good. The idea of sacrifice is now 

 looked upon as a false idea, and has long been 

 dropped from religious rites, but with the ancients 

 it was not a false idea, but an undoubted means of 

 obtaining immediate communion with the life of the 

 gods. The man who offered sacrifices was for the 

 time being a guest of supernatural beings, and he 

 aimed to make himself worthy to sit at their table. 

 The fruit or animals offered up must be without 



