Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/165

 determined in itself, and is no sooner expressed than it is immediately cancelled.

Having seen what is the general character of idea, or ordinary thought, it is now time to touch upon the pedagogic question of recent times, namely, whether religion can be taught. Teachers who do not know how to set about teaching religion, hold that instruction in the doctrines of religion is out of place. But religion has a content or substantial element, which must be capable of being placed before the mind in an objective manner. This involves the possibility of communicating the content so represented to the mind, for ideas are communicable by words. To warm the heart, to excite emotions, is something different. That is not to teach, that is to interest my subjectivity in something, and an eloquent sermon may produce the effect without containing doctrine or instruction. If, indeed, we make feeling our point of departure, if we posit it as that which is primary and original, and then say that religious ideas spring from feeling, that is, in one aspect of the matter, true, in so far as the original determinateness belongs to the nature of Spirit itself. But, on the other hand, feeling is so indeterminate that anything may be in it, and the knowledge of what lies in feeling does not belong to feeling itself, but is supplied only by the culture and instruction which ordinary thought communicates. The instructors referred to do not wish that children and mankind generally should go beyond their subjective emotions of love, and they represent the love of God as being like that of parents to their children, who love them, and should love them just as they are: they pride themselves on abiding in the love of God, and while they tread all divine and human laws under foot, they think and say they have not injured love. But if love is to be pure, it must first renounce selfishness, it must have freed itself, and Spirit is only freed when it has come outside of itself and has once beheld the