-giver, God. Religion is the recognition of our duties as
divine commands. The distinction between revealed and natural religion
is stated thus: In the former we know a thing to be a divine command
before we recognise it as our duty. In the latter we know it to be our
duty before we recognise it as a divine command. Religion may be both
natural and revealed. Its tenets may be such that man can be conceived
as arriving at them by unaided reason. But he would thus have arrived at
them at a later period in the evolution of the race. Hence revelation
might be salutary or even necessary for certain times and places without
being essential at all times or, for that matter, a permanent guarantee
of the truth of religion. There is nothing here which is new or original
with Kant. This line of reasoning was one by which men since Lessing had
helped themselves over certain difficulties. It is cited only to show
how Kant, too, failed to transcend his age in some matters, although he
so splendidly transcended it in others.

The orthodox had immemorially asserted that revelation imparted
information not otherwise attainable, or not then attainable. The
rationalists here allege the same. Kant is held fast in this view.
Assuredly what revelation imparts is not information of any sort
whatsoever, not even information concerning God. What revelation imparts
is God himself, through the will and the affection, the practical
reason. Revelation is experience, not instruction. The revealers are
those who have experienced God, Jesus the foremost among them. They have
experienced God, whom then they have manifested as best they could, but
far more significantly in what they were than in what they said. There
is surely the gravest exaggeration of what is statutory and external in
that which Kant says of the relation of ethics and religion. How can we
know that to be a command of God, which does not commend itself in our
own heart and conscience? The traditionalist would have said, by
documents miraculously confirmed. It was not in consonance with his
noblest ideas for Kant to say that. On the other hand, that which I
perceive to be my duty I, as religious man, feel to be a command of God,
whether or not a mandate of God to that effect can be adduced. Whether
an alleged revelation from God inculcates such a truth or duty may be
incidental. In a sense it is accidental. The content of all historic
revelation is conditioned in the circumstances of th