religion.

THE RATIONAL POSTULATES OF THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT.

SUMMARY.

Religion often considered merely an affair of the feelings. On the
contrary, it must assume at least three premises in reason, its
"rational postulates."

I. There is Order in things.

The religious wish involves the idea of cause. This idea not
exhausted by uniformity of sequence, but by quantitative relation,
that is, Order as opposed to Chance. Both science and religion
assume order in things; but the latter includes the Will of God in
this order, while the former rejects it.

II. This order is one of Intelligence.

The order is assumed to be a comprehensible one, whether it be of
law wholly or of volition also.

III. All Intelligence is one in kind.

This postulate indispensable to religion, although it has been
attacked by religious as well as irreligious philosophers. Its
decision must rest on the absoluteness of the formal laws of
thought. The theory that these are products of natural selections
disproved by showing, (1) that they hold true throughout the
material universe, and (2) that they do not depend on it for their
verity. Reason sees beyond phenomena, but descries nothing alien to
itself.

The formal laws of reason are purposive. They therefore afford a
presumption of a moral government of the Universe, and point to an
Intelligence fulfilling an end through the order in physical laws.
Such an assumption, common to all historic religions, is thus
justified by induction.

CHAPTER III.

THE RATIONAL POSTULATES OF THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT.

In philosophical discussions of religion as well as in popular
exhortations upon it, too exclusive stress has been laid upon its
emotional elements. "It is," says Professor Bain, "an affair of the
feelings."[87-1] "The essence of religion," observes John Stuart Mill,
"is the strong and earnest direction of the emotions and desires towards
an ideal object." "It must be allowed," says Dr. Mansel,[87-2] "that it
is not through reasoning that men obtain their first intimation of their
relation to a deity." In writers and preachers of the semi-mystical
school, which embraces most of the ardent revivalists of the day, we
constantly hear the "feeling of dependence" quoted as the radical
element of religious thought.[87-3] In America Theodore Parke