Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/276

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We have gone through this thorny path of problems, because we want already to indicate one thing as the result of it all, namely, that not what the present world has come from, not what it is becoming, not what it will be by and by, but what it eternally is, must furnish us with the deepest religious aspect of reality. All else is subordinate. We do not care so much to know what story anybody has to tell us about what has happened in the world, as to know what of moral worth always is in the world, so that whatever has happened or will happen may possess a religious significance dependent on its relation to this reality. That which changes not, wherein is no variableness, neither shadow of turning, that must give us the real religious truth upon which all else will depend. A particular event in the world may have a religious significance, but that significance will depend on the relation of this event to eternal truth. And the eternal truth is what we want to know.

Therefore our search will become somewhat narrowed, whenever at least we grow fully convinced of this truth. The “power that makes for righteousness” will become a conception of doubtful religious value. An eternal power, that with all its past eternity of work cannot yet quite vindicate righteousness? Perhaps we shall have to find the religious aspect of things elsewhere. But let us leave, at all events, the world of pure science.

As we do so some objector may interpose the assertion that we have generalized too hastily in speak- ing of the insignificance of the historical aspect of