Page:An analysis of religious belief (1877).djvu/725

 *ious minds. If religion has always had a tendency to run to seed in dogma, it has also always had a tendency to revert to its fundamental mysticism. The very best and highest minds have continually evinced this tendency to mysticism, and it has mixed itself up with the logical definitions of others who did not rise to so exalted a level. So that the examination of the writings of religious men will continually disclose that profound impression of the utterly incomprehensible and mysterious nature of the Supreme Being which is now, in its complete development in the form of Agnosticism, stigmatized as incompatible with genuine religious faith.

That tendency to be deeply sensible of the impossibility of conceiving the Absolute which Religion has thus evinced, it is the result of Science to strengthen and to increase. Science shows the imperfection of all the concrete expressions which have been found for the Unknowable. It proves that we cannot think of the Unknowable as entering in any peculiar sense into special objects in nature, dwelling in special places, or speaking through special channels. Miraculous phenomena, which were supposed to constitute the peculiar sphere of its manifestations, are thrown by Science completely out of the account. But all phenomena whatsoever are shown to manifest the Unknowable. Thus, while scientific inquiry tends to diminish the intensity of religious ideas, it tends to widen their extension. They do not any longer cling to partial symbols. They do not attach themselves with the same fervor to individual embodiments. But, in becoming more abstract, they become also more pervading. Religion is found everywhere and in everything. All nature is the utterance of the idea. And, as it gains in extension while losing in intensity in reference to the external world, it goes through a similar process in relation to human life. No longer a force seizing on given moments of our existence, at one moment inspiring devotional observances, at the next forgotten in the pleasures or the business of the day; at one time filling men with the zeal of martyrs or crusaders, at another leaving them to the unrestrained indulgence of gross injustice or revolting cruelty, it becomes a calm, all-pervading sentiment, shown (if it be shown at all) in the general beauty and spirituality of the character, not in the stated