What is Distinctive in the Religious Outlook.
At the very beginning and throughout we must keep the following points clearly before us, otherwise all our endeavours will only lead us astray, and be directed towards an altogether false issue.
Firstly, everything depends and must depend upon vindicating the validity and freedom of the religious view of the world as contrasted with world-science in general; but we must not attempt to derive it directly from the latter. If religion is to live, it must be able to demonstrate—and it can be demonstrated—that its convictions in regard to the world and human existence are not contradicted from any other quarter, that they are possible and may be believed to be true. It can, perhaps, also be shown that a calm and unprejudiced study of nature, both physical and metaphysical reflection on things, will supplement the interpretations of religion, and will lend confirmation and corroboration to many of the articles of faith already assured to it. But it would be quite erroneous to maintain that we must be able to read the religious conception of the world out of nature, and that it must be, in the first instance, derivable from nature, or that we can, not to say must, regard natural knowledge as the source and basis of the religious interpretation of the world. An apologetic based on such an idea as this would greatly overestimate its own strength, and not only venture too high a stake, but would damage the cause of religion and alter the whole position of the question. This mistake has often been made. The old practice of finding “evidences of the existence of God” had exactly this tendency. It was seriously believed that one could thereby do more than vindicate for religious conviction a right of way in the system of knowledge. It was seriously believed that knowledge of God could be gained from and read out of nature, the world, and earthly existence, and thus that the propositions of the religious view of the world could not only gain freedom and security, but could be fundamentally proved, and even directly inferred from Nature in the first instance. The strength of these evidences was greatly overestimated, and Nature was too much studied with reference to her harmony, her marvellous wealth and purposeful wisdom, her significant arrangements and endless adaptations; and too little attention was paid to the multitudinous enigmas, to the many instances of what seems unmeaning and purposeless, confused and dark. People were far too ready to reason from finite things to infinite causes, and the validity or logical necessity of the inferences drawn was far too rarely scrutinised. And, above all, the main point was overlooked. For even if these “evidences” had succeeded better, if they had been as sufficient as they were insufficient, it is certain that religion and the religious conception of the world could never have arisen from them, but were in existence long before any such considerations had been taken into account.