Page:An analysis of religious belief (1877).djvu/685

 cramping their freedom in the name of religion itself. Thus between the human mind and dogma, between the religious sentiment and dogma, there is going on a perpetual warfare. Religious sentiment is no sooner born than the tendency to limit and to define makes itself felt. It is confined within a set of dogmas, and forbidden under every species of pains and penalties to pass over its allotted bounds. Sooner or later, religious sentiment bursts through every restriction; seems for a moment to breathe the invigorating air of freedom, but falls again into the hands of new theologians, with another framework of dogmas; to be again broken through in its turn when its fettering influence can be no longer borne. In carrying on this continually renovated contest—which is seen in its highest activity in great religious reformations—the religious sentiment seeks the alliance of intellect, which latter supplies it with deadly weapons drawn from the armories of science, logic, and historical research. Thus the overthrow of theology is in great part an intellectual work. But it must not be forgotten that the very deepest hostility to theological systems is inspired by the very emotion to which these systems seek to give a formal and definite expression.

The historical progress of religion is thus in some degree a counterpart of the progress described by Heine (in the lines heading this Book) as that of his individual mind. First of all there arises in the mind of man, so soon as he begins to speculate on the world in which he lives, the idea of a Creator. He cannot conceive the existence of the material objects with which he is familiar without conceiving also some being more powerful than himself who has made them what they are. His notions of creation may be, no doubt often are, extremely limited. He may confine the operations of his God to that small portion of the universe with which he is most familiar. But that the idea of an invisible yet preëminent deity arises very early in the mental development of the human race, and remains brooding dimly above the popular idolatry, has been abundantly shown. This is the belief in God the Father. The second stage, so closely interwoven with the first as to be inseparable from it in actual history, is the incarnation of this idea. The supreme Creator is too lofty, too abstract, too great,