For one thing, it is distinguished from strictly theoretic knowledge by the practical motive which obtains in it. This seems the view taken in O. Ritschl's Uber Werthurtheile, but would, if accepted, reduce the distinction to a truism. Page 29 and relations. Religion, on the other hand, seeks to set its objects before it in those lights, and under those aspects, which directly subserve religious ends. With this difference of aim is connected a difference of form.
Theoretic knowledge is cool, clear, and scientifically exact.
In the first place, religion, as having to do with the personal relation of the soul to God, moves in a sphere in which the affections and emotions are necessarily allowed large play. Its modes of apprehension are therefore warm, lively, impassioned, intuitive. A certain amount of figurative representation necessarily enters into the purest conceptions we are able to form of such objects. Still less is it to be conceded that there is any necessary divorce between the mind in its practical and the mind in its theoretical activities, so that propositions may be affirmed in the one sphere which have no relation to, can receive no corroboration from, may even be contradicted by, propositions affirmed in the other. Thus to tear asunder faith and reason is to render no service to religion, but is to pave the way for theoretical scepticism.