62 



EEV. A. R. WHATELY^ D.D., ON THE DEMAND 



Thus we are still far from the conception of rational and social 

 intuition, the subjective correlative of historical revelation. 

 And even if we go on to draw inferences from these psychological 

 phenomena, supplemented by the study of Comparative Eeligion, 

 we are still rationalizing, however usefully. Whether or no 

 such methods as these are the only admissible ones, it is not my 

 object — at least not my main object — here to discuss. Suffice 

 it to insist that, if so they be, we must abandon our efforts to 

 enthrone the Christian consciousness over the realm of intellect. 

 To some good Christians this conclusion will not seem distressing, 

 or at least they can comfortably contemplate the indefinite 

 postponement of the synthesis. My own feeling in the matter 

 is quite otherwise ; and here let me merely observe that 

 the consummation of which I am speaking will not need 

 to wait for the complete articulation of a Christian philosophy, 

 but will be attained, for all who may accept it, when the found- 

 ation is laid. 



I do not believe in any attempt to synthesize Empiricism 

 and Eationalism, or at least that any such synthesis can satisfy 

 the demand for a Christian Philosophy. It may seem attractive 

 to combine the apparent concreteness, the colour, the wealth of 

 actual fact, in which Empiricism glories, with the vastness, the 

 loftiness, the close articulation, of the great monistic cos- 

 mologies. But both methods, as I have tried to show, fail to 

 reach to the real inwardness of the religious consciousness, and 

 therefore it is not sufficient that the two should be balanced or 

 correlated : we must find a deeper standpoint, and from that 

 standpoint avail ourselves of what is true in both. Psychology 

 cannot fill the ratiocinative skeleton with flesh and life ; for 

 psychology, as has been justly maintained, cannot deal with the 

 real living reality of the phenomena it examines : it kills before 

 it dissects. Christian philosophy must rest on personalism, for 

 the Christian religion is personal to the core : and personality 

 (for us at least who maintain, as against all forms of Determinism, 

 that it is radically free) transcends the scope of all science, even 

 psychological science ; for science abstracts from freedom, and 

 as Bergson has shown, can study even life only from an external 

 and mechanical point of view. And besides, not only could not 

 Empiricism supply the content, but no speculative system, 

 starting from the supposed immediacy of sense data could 

 possibly receive it. 'No methods can satisfy the intellectual 

 demands of religious experience except those which bring to 

 expression its own latent implications. Eeligious experience 

 cannot be formulated ab extra. It cannot be rationalized from 



