h of the same inspiration in his passionate
exclamation: "Far, O Lord, far from the heart of thy servant be it that
I should rejoice in any joy whatever. The blessed life is the joy in
truth alone."[274-2] And amid the paeans to everlasting life which fill
the pages of the _De Imitatione Christi_, the medieval monk saw
something yet greater, when he puts in the mouth of God the Father, the
warning: "The wise lover thinks not of the gift, but of the love of the
giver. He rests not in the reward, but in Me, beyond all
rewards."[275-1] The mystery of great godliness is, that he who has it
is as one who seeking nothing yet finds all things, who asking naught
for his own sake, neither in the life here nor yet hereafter, gains that
alone which is of worth in either.

Pressed by such considerations, the pious Schleiermacher threw down the
glaive on the side of religion half a century ago when he wrote: "Life
to come, as popularly conceived, is the last enemy which speculative
criticism has to encounter, and, if possible, to overcome." The course
he marked out, however, was not that which promises success. Recurring
to the austere theses of Spinoza, he sought to bring them into accord
with a religion of emotion. The result was a refined Pantheism with its
usual deceptive solutions.

What recourse is left? Where are we to look for the intellectual moment
of religion in the future? Let us review the situation.

The religious sentiment has been shown to be the expression of
unfulfilled desire, but this desire peculiar as dependent on unknown
power. Material advantages do not gratify it, nor even spiritual joy
when regarded as a personal sentiment. Preservation by and through
relation with absolute intelligence has appeared to be the meaning of
that "love of God" which alone yields it satisfaction. Even this is
severed from its received doctrinal sense by the recognition of the
speculative as above the numerical unity of that intelligence, and the
limitation of personality which spiritual thought demands. The eternal
laws of mind guarantee perpetuity to the extent they are obeyed--and no
farther. They differ from the laws of force in that they convey a
message which cannot be doubted concerning the purport of the order in
nature, which is itself "the will of God." That message in its
application is the same which with more or less articulate utterance
every religion speaks--Seek truth: do good. Faith in that message,
confidence