how many are they who love it!

The finely-moulded

body suggests the possibility of pain, which is expressed in the face. Death in the Christ is made more tragic by life in nature. A strong wind tosses the hair of the quiet sufferer, while it throws into exquisite folds the cloth about His loins. Upon Him settles the darkness, while the background of the picture is lighted up to reveal a hill and several trees by the river. Art and religion are here reconciled.

The spontaneous and sensitive quality of religious art further appears in poetry. Religion is by its very nature a literary matter, for the realities and intensities of human worship must have the direct form of poetic expression rather than the reflective and discursive forms of speculation. Language is an organic thing, and in warm qualities of its development it follows a matter in keeping with the religious precinct. Isaiah was no dreary deist, but a prophet who beheld the glory of God in the form of seraphims with six wings. Ezekiel's vision disclosed fourwinged beasts, and his God, instead of being clad in royal garments and seated on a throne, was entirely wrapped in flames. Amos and Micah differ, in that one is royal, the other rural, in his method of theistic representation. These prophets do not infer but intuit, as their deliverances will show, and no calculating systems can explain, much less explain away, the Vedic, the Homeric, or the Judaic, which are indigenous to humanity. If life has no transcendental vanishing point, and man has no destiny, then these plays of spirit are fantastic and vain, but if spiritual life is real and of world-power, then the seer deserves the immortal credit for his discovery.

In the midst of these intuitive forms the truth of religion still persists, and we need not be alarmed when we find that propositions of immediate evidence are not concluded by means of logical inference on the part of the critical understanding. Religion creates because it is possessed of life; thought criticizes the given product of humanity with

its religious consciousness. And this view of life need not dwindle in significance, when it is said that religious ideas may possess a "poetic truth." It is genuine truth which we desire, and when it has been obtained we need not be anxious over the particular method of its apprehension. Intuition, which has a certain metaphysical form peculiar to itself, supplies the mind with universal and necessary ideas, and we may depend upon these, even though they are not produced by means of abstraction and generalization. With respect to historical religions, it may be added that Christianity is the most æsthetical, since it represents not mere sense or sheer spirit, but a triumphant unity of outer and inner functions. At the same time, Christianity

is as intelligible as it is artistic.

B. THE RELIGIOUS INTERPRETATION OF LIFE

In the same way that religion constructs, and itself consists of, a view of the world, it also furnishes a characteristic interpretation of human life. As we seek to unfold the practical portion of religious character, we must again remind ourselves that we are dealing with a subject which occupies an independent province in the human spirit just as we should see that, with a nature sui generis, it is likely to assume representative relation to human life. Furthermore, the self-centred and creative form of religion, which makes it consist of art rather than knowledge, will here exert an influence which is calculated to demonstrate that religion is not so much an ethical consideration of the ideal, as it is a juristic production of a positive form of life. Toward ethical science our attitude must be critical, although it should appear that religion, which is a worthy form of existence, is not inimical to morality, although it is ever inclined to adapt itself to the principles of law.

1. Religion and Ethics

It would seem as though our thought must move more cautiously in suggesting any invidious contrast between religion and ethics. With Hume and Kant behind us, with the atmosphere of positivism about us, we are almost willing to say that religion, like other forms of spiritual life, need not have a metaphysical basis consisting of substantial and causal categories; but, when we survey the ethical, we are not so prone to deny and to say that the same non-logical religion may further assert its independence of morality. But why should we hesitate ? If nonrational religion may still be as intelligible as the intuitive discipline of art, so non-ethical religion may still be good in the puristic sense. Not all of truth is logical, not all of goodness is ethical, art and law still have their views and their claims, and with them as bulwarks, religion may assert the independence of its precinct in apposition to both metaphysics and morality. The present age has learned half of this lesson, and has accepted a part of the truth; it means now to render religion independent of ethics as well as of logic.

In adjusting religion to ethics we must settle accounts with Kant, who puts morality upon the independent metaphysical basis of freedom, and then subsumes religion under it. As a philosopher and ethical personality Kant holds a unique position among modern thinkers. His transcendental logic, expressed in the " Critique of Pure Reason," acts as a final arbiter between the empiricism of Locke and the rationalism of Leibnitz, while his æsthetical Critique of Judgment" is also imperious in its attitude toward the sensualism of Burke and the formalism of Baumgarten. Combining experience and sense with understanding and thought, Kant creates an epoch in speculative philosophy, on the side of logic and æsthetics. But the Critique of Practical Reason," with all its practical import, does not assume an attitude parallel to the other

two critiques; it assumes no magisterial position, combines no schools of hedonism and rationalism, but follows the usual trend of intuitionism. We cannot say, of course, that Kant imitates Adam Smith and Butler, who anticipate him in several ways, nor can we say, on the other hand, that he deals with these representatives of heteronomy and autonomy as he had elsewhere adjusted school to school. Kant's misoneism is expressed again in "Philosophy of Rights," which refuses to abandon the artificiality of the school of natural rights, even when this was engulfed by the French Revolution; and the founder of the critical system is as conservative in dealing with life-problems as he is destructive in the realm of thinking. The strength of his philosophy is its moralism, but this is also its weakness, and if he flouts logic for the sake of ethics, it may be said that Hegel ignores ethics in behalf of logic, while Schleiermacher casts both from the province of religion. If, therefore, we have tried to show that religion, while intelligent and intuitive, is not logical, we must now complete our work by pointing out that religion, while it embraces the idea of piety, does not consist of ethics.

This should not sound strange in the ears of those who believe in the intrinsic quality and imperative significance of the moral principle, for we desire merely to show that religion also exists. Where modern æsthetics, in distinction from the ancient, regards art as having a basis independent of morality and metaphysics, so that it is necessary for us to evaluate it in ideas other than those of utility and imitation, so religion may be said to have a precinct of its own, wherein it elaborates values other than those of virtue and the good, conscience and duty. And we have no more sufficient reason for saying that religion is not metaphysics than we have for affirming, as we here do, that it is not morality. The immediate identification of religion and morality is an incestuous union, and it is only when the ties of consanguinity are broken that thought may celebrate the mystic marriage of these two children of

spiritual life. What is here attempted is a formal separation of distinct phases of culture, and that upon the basis of an intimate conception of each in its genius and philosophic status. Our present line of inquiry is thus to find out what is the essential difference between the ethical and the religious. Then the real point of contact may more readily be found.

The discussion of this twofold problem must do justice to the various phases of the subject. First of all it must be shown where the essential form of religion differs from that of ethics. In this way a clear distinction between the two sciences is made possible, and that in a manner which is just to each. When once this distinction has been pointed out the problem of connecting the two is more readily apprehended. Secondly, an examination of the conditions of positive religion will show that there is an actual connection between human worship and human conduct. The extent and substantial character of this relation must then be fully examined. Here the real problem arises. Distinct phases of human speculation evince an association which may turn out to be only circumstantial and contingent. Then, in the third place, it must be asked: How may the union of religion and morality be effected? Why must religion be essentially moral in order to carry out what it claims to be and do? Such a question can be answered only when these two distinct provinces are related philosophically. Trespass and incursion will then give way to an amicable and satisfactory settlement of the claims of two adjacent fields. How shall this be done, unless there be found some common concept which shall overcome the breach between these forms of culture?

1. The distinction between religion and morality will appear as soon as we develop the idea that religion is in its nature positive and in its character pessimistic, while ethics is ever normative science based upon the ideal which is discussed in an optimistic manner. To ignore particular ethical theories, for a while, and to investigate the nature