Page:The Conception of God (1897).djvu/150

Rh that “religion is morality touched with emotion”; for Dr. Le Conte rightly reminds us that the emotion which is religious must not merely touch and kindle but must vivify, and must be not simply emotion but noble emotion. But it seems to me that his saying, like Arnold’s, still leaves the true relations inverted. Yes, as much as inverted; because, in truth, religion is not morality touched and vivified by noble emotion, but, rather, religion is emotion touched by morality, and at that wondrous touch not merely ennobled but actually raised from the dead — uplifted from the grave of sense into the life eternal of reason. For life eternal is life germinating in that true and only Inclusive Reason, the supreme consciousness of the reality of the City of God, — the Ideal that seats the central reality of each human being in an eternal circle of Persons, and establishes each as a free citizen in the all-founding, all-governing Realm of Spirits. So is it that religion can only draw its breath in the quickening air of moral freedom, and our great poet’s word comes strictly true, —

And thus I am led to repeat, that the main argument of this evening, striking as it is, does not establish any Reality sufficingly religious, — does not establish the being of. This will continue true of it, for the reasons just pointed out, even if we grant that the Infinite Self is a unity inclusive of an indefinite