Religion and the Belief in God.

But it may be a source of disquietude to some gentle and reverential natures that it should be even proposed, explicitly and directly, to divorce the idea of religion from the idea of God,—to the extent, at least, of leaving the existence of God an open question to be answered by scientific thought. Let me say a few words on this point.

The inevitable consequence of adopting the conception of religion here sketched is certainly to make the spiritual evolution of humanity towards truth and right the direct object at which religion must aim; and to leave the mind at perfect liberty to determine, according to the fixed laws of thought, what truth and right are, and what the spiritual evolution of humanity requires. It is true that religion, thus conceived, cannot assume beforehand even that God exists; and the devout spirits that find the very breath of life in their faith in God, and have never felt the enormous pressure of modern science against the ancient bulwarks of this faith, may not unnaturally shrink back from thus putting in peril the dearest conviction of their souls. For all such I can but feel a sympathy as tender as it is sincere. It is to these very ones that I would say, Be brave and strong enough to rest your faith in God on faith in truth and right! If religion shall be consecrated solely to truth and right, as its just, natural, and necessary object, and shall waive frankly and avowedly the one dogma of God's page 28 existence to which it has hitherto convulsively clung, have you any cause to fear? Do you dread lest truth and right may possibly, after all, not lead to belief in God? Do you cherish a faith in him so feeble and unsound that you dare not trust it to the sentence of truth and right? Or would you wish to retain any faith against which the decision of truth and right should prove to be ad verse? If these things are so, then your faith in God is only scepticism in disguise: you do not really believe in him at all; you cherish a belief whose basis you suspect to be' rotten and false, and therefore will not suffer to be examined even by yourself. In such a belief as that, there is nothing noble, nothing that will not break and suddenly give way beneath the weight of unexpected disaster. No! It is because I do believe in God that I am willing to submit my belief in him to the sharpest and most searching scrutiny of science. I am willing to do with this my dearest belief what the Christian clergy dare not do with their own professed faith in prayer,—submit it without reserve to scientific tests, promising to abide by the result. If science can kill my faith, let it die! I want none that is not immortal. Trust me, it is no secret desire to get rid of belief in God that moves me to espouse this larger conception of religion; I desire only truth and right. If they confirm my belief, well and good; it shall then be infinitely more dear and precious than ever before. But if they destroy it, then, also, well and good! I shall but have been freed from an unsuspected superstition. Surely this is a manlier, a nobler, a freer, a more inspiring conviction, than the secret thought that belief in God cannot be trusted before the bar of truth and right! If indeed it cannot be trusted there, what is it worth? Or who would want it? Or why should any one weep when it is cast out in dishonor? But if before this august tribunal the belief in God shall receive the seal of truth itself, and rest no longer on childish guesses or traditions or scriptures, what believer in God could do otherwise than rejoice? It is time the world well understood that, in all questions of truth and right, the ultimate page 29 appeal must he to the educated intelligence of the human race,—in one word, to science; and whoever has at heart a real belief in God will not hesitate to submit it to this or any other test. What could be clearer than that they who dare submit it have a mightier faith than they who dare not?