tter. If religion is to live, it must be able to
demonstrate--and it can be demonstrated--that its convictions in regard to
the world and human existence are not contradicted from any other quarter,
that they are possible and may be believed to be true. It can, perhaps,
also be shown that a calm and unprejudiced study of nature, both physical
and metaphysical reflection on things, will supplement the interpretations
of religion, and will lend confirmation and corroboration to many of the
articles of faith already assured to it. But it would be quite erroneous
to maintain that we must be able to read the religious conception of the
world out of nature, and that it must be, in the first instance, derivable
from nature, or that we can, not to say must, regard natural knowledge as
the source and basis of the religious interpretation of the world. An
apologetic based on such an idea as this would greatly overestimate its
own strength, and not only venture too high a stake, but would damage the
cause of religion and alter the whole position of the question. This
mistake has often been made. The old practice of finding "evidences of the
existence of God" had exactly this tendency. It was seriously believed
that one could thereby do more than vindicate for religious conviction a
right of way in the system of knowledge. It was seriously believed that
knowledge of God could be gained from and read out of nature, the world,
and earthly existence, and thus that the propositions of the religious
view of the world could not only gain freedom and security, but could be
fundamentally proved, and even directly inferred from Nature in the first
instance. The strength of these evidences was greatly overestimated, and
Nature was too much studied with reference to her harmony, her marvellous
wealth and purposeful wisdom, her significant arrangements and endless
adaptations; and too little attention was paid to the multitudinous
enigmas, to the many instances of what seems unmeaning and purposeless,
confused and dark. People were far too ready to reason from finite things
to infinite causes, and the validity or logical necessity of the
inferences drawn was far too rarely scrutinised. And, above all, the main
point was overlooked. For even if these "evidences" had succeeded better,
if they had been as sufficient as they were insufficient, it is certain
that religion and the religious conception of the world could never have
arisen from them, but