Page:Literature and Dogma (1883).djvu/74

 oblivion ever put it to sleep.' A system of theological notions about personality, essence, existence, consubstantiality, is artificial religion, and is the proper opposite to revealed; since it is a religion which comes forth in no one's consciousness, but is invented by theologians,—able men with uncommon talents for abstruse reasoning. This religion is in no sense revealed, just because it is in no sense natural. And revealed religion is properly so named, just in proportion as it is in a pre-eminent degree natural.

The religion of the Bible, therefore, is well said to be revealed, because the great natural truth, that ' righteousness tendeth to life,' is seized and exhibited there with such in comparable force and efficacy. All, or very nearly all, the nations of mankind have recognised the importance of conduct, and have attributed to it a natural obligation. They, however, looked at conduct, not as something full of happiness and joy, but as something one could not manage to do without. But: 'Sion heard of it and rejoiced, and the daughters of Judah were glad, because of thy judgments, O Eternal!' Happiness is our being's end and aim, and no one has ever come near Israel in feeling, and in making others feel, that to righteousness belongs happiness! The prodigies and the marvellous of Bible-religion are common to it with all religions; the love of righteousness, in this eminency, is its own.

5.

The real germ of religious consciousness, therefore, out of which sprang Israel's name for God, to which the records of his history adapted themselves, and which came to be clothed upon, in time, with a mighty growth of poetry and tradition, was a consciousness of the not ourselves which makes for righteousness. And the way to convince oneself