ity, and the survival of
that religion will be determined by the solution of ordinary problems of
historical or metaphysical research. But the Christian will very
properly claim that his religion is only externally and accidentally
related to such propositions, since they are never or very rarely
intended in his experience. As religious he is occupied with Christ as
his saviour or with God as his protector and judge. The history of Jesus
or the metaphysics of God essentially concern him only in so far as they
may or may not invalidate this relationship. He cares only for the power
and disposition of the divine, and these are affected by history and
metaphysics only in so far as he has definitely put them to such proof.

For my religion is my sense of a practical situation, and only when
that has been proved to be folly has my religion become untrue. My God
is my practical faith, my plan of salvation. My religion is overthrown
if I am convinced that I have misconceived the situation and mistaken
what I should do to be saved. The conception of God is very simple
practically, and very complex theoretically, a fact that confirms its
practical genesis. My conception of God contains _an idea of my own
interests_, _an idea of the disposition of the universe toward my
interests_, and _some working plan for the reconciliation of these two
terms_. These three elements form a practical unity, but each is capable
of emphasis, and a religion may be transformed through the modification
of any one of them. It appears, then, as has always been somewhat
vaguely recognized, that the truth of religion is ethical as well as
metaphysical or scientific. My religion will be altered by a change in
my conception of what constitutes my real interest, a change in my
conception of the fundamental causes of reality, or a change in my
conception of the manner in which my will may or may not affect these
causes. God is neither an entity nor an ideal, but always a relation of
entity to ideal: _reality regarded from the stand-point of its
favorableness or unfavorableness to human life, and prescribing for the
latter the propriety of a certain attitude_.

[Sidenote: Historical Examples of Religious Truth and Error. The
Religion of Baal.]

Sect. 31. The range of historical examples is limitless, but certain of
these are especially calculated to emphasize the application of a
criterion to religion. Such is the case with Elijah's encounter with the
prop