The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-07-02


senses and the Imagination are made tribu-
tary to devotional susceptibilities. These
mutually opposing tendencies towards ire
hgion on the one side and ritualism on
the other, are natural counterparts resulting
perhaps from different but equally onesided
modes of viewing the universe. Religion is
rather a want of the affections than Of the In
telleot. The chief guarantee Of its perpetuity
is the deep need felt by large class Of minds
of the support and repose which they find in
the exercise Of religious emotions Even II
cold dry reasoners could demonstrate ever so
clearly the falsity of this or that system of
belief, they would not thereby extinguish this
deep-felt want of human nature, and crop of
new religions weuld spring up to replace those
which had been exploded. Religion rests on
irrepressible cravings of the human heart,
and 1t can no more be banished from
the world than can music, or poetry,
or ornamental architecture, or elegant
apparel. While nobody would care 20
vouch for the permanence of any partiou-
lar school of poetry or art, or any fashion
of dress, nobody can doubt that poetry, art,
and personal adornment will last as long as
the human race. The science which rejects
religion because it finds flaws in some parts
OF the evidence Of some particular faith, is
as narrow, as fragmentary, as one-sided as is
the pietism which cannot tolerate the bold
spirit of inquiry which is the breath of
science. The present age furnishes con-
spicuous examples of both these forms of
narrowness; and while, on the one hand,
we find men of science treating religion
with scarcely suppressed contempt we see
on the other a tendency to withdraw religion
from the domain of the intellect, and an
chor it in the imagination and feelings. Each
OF these extremes is phenomenon deserving
the most careful study. They are probably
disjointed parts of what should be har-
monious whole. Devotees need to borrow
something from the bold searching
need to recognize in the religious element of
human nature subject quite as worthy of
patient and profound investigation as the
laws of the physical universe. Ritualism is
like maiden who is ready to elope with her
lover rather than not have him, and science
acts like guardian who dooms her to per-
petual singleness because he is dissatisfied
with her suitOr. She may be wayward, but
he is the more unreasonable, for human nature
has cravings which can no more be extin-
guished than can the affinity of oxygen for
the alkaline metals. And of these strong
human afinities the cravings of the religious
instincts are among the most powerful and in
destructible.
Between the extremes of ritualsm and skep-
ticism, one of which asserts the claims of the
intellectual, and the other of the emotional
part of our nature, there lies body of in.
quirers who combine these conflicting tenden-
cies of the age, and deserve to be regarded as
its more symmetrical representatives. Recog-
nizing alike the reality of religion and the
methods of science, they are carrying into the
former the same force, freshness, and inde-
wonders in the latter. Historical and biblical
criticism and rational psychology are ad-
vancing by strides almost as gigantic as those
of physical science, and the faith of advanced
communities is probably on the eve of trans
fguration as refulgent as the light which
modern science has poured over nature. The
emotional tendencies of the human heart,
their modes of action, and the laws of their
development, are as worthy subjects of inves-
tigation as any which can engage the study
of superior minds. The further these inquiries
are prosecuted the more it will probably be
seen that the sources of religion, like those of
poetry and art, but in greater degree than
poetry and art, lie in parts of our nature
which the processes of simple intellect are as
inadequate to analyze as the science of hy-
draulcs is to account for what in the cataract
of Niagara we call its sublimity. There are
aspects of things perceptible only by the emo
tional sensibilities, and which the mere intel
lect cannot detect. The Office of the intellect
in reference to these is not so much contem-
plation of the exciting objects as of the excited
sensibilities, and of the laws according to which
they operate. We surmise that religious
truth will at last be found to resemble poetical
truth, as consisting in conformity to certain
emotional requirements rather than invulne-
rability by the logic of the understanding. We
have all felt thousand times that some pas
sage POLITICALLY true is physically false. Take,
for example, these powerful lines from Byron's
description of thunderstorm in the Alps:-
"Far along
! From peak TO peak the rattling crags among
| Leaps the live thunder not from one lone
cloud,
| But every mountain now hath found tongue,
And Jura answers, through her misty shroud,
| Back to the: joyous Alps, who call to her
aloudW
This is nobly true as addressed to the
| imagination, but the mere realistic intellect
| would fling it out as false and incredible.
naturalist will tell you that the thunder was
not alive; that it did not leap; that the noun
| tains had not tongues and did not shout to each
other through the mist. And from his point
of view the naturalist is right. But the poet
is also hright, and despite his fctions, nay, by
| the aid of his fctions, he conveys a much
truer conception of the terrific sublimity of the
scene he describes than could have been given
| in the strict language of science. There are
| minds gifted to see the devotional aspect of
| things as great bards are gifted to see their
poetical side. We can afford to lose neither
| the poetical nor the religious view because
| they are beyond the ken of the mere mathe-
matician and physicist, any more than we are
bound to dispense with music because the
science of acoustics does not explain the prin-
| ciples of harmony. Whatever is addressed to
| the emotional parts of our nature must con-
form to their peculiar organization and modes
| of operation, and this conformity is the kind
1 of 10 no afxyo oVto uNIh