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8 47 Provisional

of God.

religious prayer, with the feeling of resignation. The combination of the two images thus wrought in the mind of the worshipper is the end and purpose of manifestation prayer. In all strong feelings which are approved by the moral sense, religious prayer is the natural expression of them; in feelings of joy, of whatever kind, the prayer becomes thanksgiving, -the expression of gratitude; in doubt, or on the entering upon any hazardous undertaking, prayer becomes the expression of a wish with resignation; in grief, from whatever cause arising, it becomes an outpouring of complaint; but in all cases alike it is the drawing near in thought, the energetic reproduction in imagination, of the person prayed to, along with renewed dwelling on the objects which occupy our own feelings at the time. The answer to prayer consists in the increase of the joyful emotions, the decrease of the painful ones, either immediately or after an interval; and this is the end or purpose which the prayer itself desires; this and not the obtaining a request is the rλos of the act. This answer is as certain to follow as the effect on its cause in any of the most certain successions of events in the physical world. It is one case among those which constitute. the general law, that voluntary mental energy is accompanied by a certain general mode of pleasure which is its inseparable reward. It may be said that the whole of religion is contained in prayer.

4. It is a feature in religion that doubt and sorrow, whether for calamity from without, or for moral evil in ourselves, are much more readily the beginning of religion than is any form of joy. The call of the preacher is responded to most gladly by those who suffer and by those who repent. This by no means

proves that religion, even in its sublimest moods, is
not suitable to, or the natural completion of, the joy-
ful emotions. The reason why it is less frequent in
them is this, that the effort of imagination requires a
stimulus, and in most men a very powerful one, to
exertion. Joy is of itself, when an object is enjoyed,
a reason for resting in the same kind of satisfaction
as that of the present moment. Neither the effort
of thought in any shape, nor that of poetical imagina-
tion, is willingly made when we are in the full enjoy-
ment of ease, wealth, and prosperity; a circumstance
which must have immense weight in contributing to
the decay of prosperous nations and societies. Again,
continued or habitual solitude, the isolation from the
usual intercourse of common life, so as to throw the
mind back upon itself, is an almost necessary condi-
tion for really enjoying the most highly imaginative
poetry; only in such a way can the mind bend itself
to meet the poet on the imaginative heights which he
treads, or obtain an insight into the emotional secrets
which he describes. Again, sorrow and isolation and
disgrace intensify the feeling of tenderness towards
those friends whom we have, and the heart bounds
towards them with eagearness. Shakespeare's well-
known sonnet,

"When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes
I all alone beweep my outcast state, &c."

and many others which might be cited, is ample proof
of this emotional law. The tenderness in religious
love is increased by similar circumstances; and, where
these are wanting, the effort to kindle it must be
proportionately greater. Wherever this effort is made
in such circumstances, not by artificial stimulants, but

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BOOK I. CH. II. PART V.

$48. Retrospect.

by continued reflection and watchfulness, the blessing is proportionate to the effort. That religion is the crown and completion of all emotions, joyful as well as painful, is shown by this, that religion alone of all the great passions is calm and peaceful; it is a passion, yet not uneasy.

§ 48. 1. One word in retrospect over the whole subject of religion. No attempt has been made here to prove that religion is true, but only to analyse it and state the result. Religion, like sense, is immediate feeling, and every feeling has its own object or framework, as I have called it, inseparably combined. The truth of religion consists in the permanence of the feeling together with its own framework, under the clearest light that can be thrown on it by historical investigation and analysis, and by new experience in the future. The fact of its permanence must speak for itself. It is useless to try to prove that such and such an object ought to be the object of religion; the only question is this, what object is so. To discover this, it is requisite to analyse correctly religion as an emotion, for this analysis gives emotion and framework at one and the same time. There are no accidents, oupßeßnzóra, in religion. In this as in all cases, the connection between emotion and framework is necessary matter. If a different framework is substituted, on whatever grounds, a different emotion will be found pervading it. Everything depends on the emotion which is in view when religion is spoken of. Now it will be seen, perhaps objected, that I have gone to the Christian Scriptures, the writings of the New Testament, for the account of what religious emotion is. It is true that I have done so, and for this reason, that I find among them the expression of

feelings and of truths which, as Coleridge said, "find me," that is, approve themselves immediately to my mind as accurate and true, in a way which no other writings do, except such perhaps as have drawn their inspiration from the same source. For a precisely similar reason I go to Plato, Aristotle, Berkeley, Kant, Hegel, for the expression of the profoundest insight into the truths of philosophy. I know no criterion of truth, such that it can infallibly decide now what will be true hereafter. We are all seekers of truth, workers towards truth; we take whatever immediately approves itself to our minds, and endeavour to harmonise it into a consistent whole. Of what will be true hereafter we can now say only this, that it will be a consistent whole, for that is part of the definition of what we are seeking; but whether this mass of facts, or that mass of facts, as we now hold them, will form part of that consistent whole which we anticipate,-of this there is no infallible criterion at hand.

2. Turning our view back upon the whole course of this Chapter, the question which I would suggest is this, does or does not the analysis performed in it bear out the view stated in § 39, that the meaning of this world which we inhabit consists in the feelings, and chiefly among them in the emotions; not in the formal part of existence or consciousness, or in the frameworks of the emotions? Purely speculative or logical objects, that is, objects which are defined by formal or logical relations, such as are rò ev, Tò öv, force, power, substance, cause, first cause, all of which must be conceived as ontological or absolute objects, since they are the union of formal relations alone into some supposed empirical or complete object, cannot

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yield any satisfactory truth; and for this reason, that whatever truth they possess is purely formal, and not formal and material in union. The material element in consciousness or existence is Feeling; and of feeling there are two great kinds, sensation and emotion. While sensations alone, and not the form in which they appear, give the meaning, nature, or content, of the objects called from them objects of sense, the emotions on the other hand give the meaning, nature, or content, of objects of representation, so far as they are representations and not presentations.

TABLE OF REFLECTIVE AND IMAGINATIVE EMOTIONS.

Group 1. The poetical emotions.

Group 2. The religious emotions.

Primary: Worship, Sin, Sense of justification.
Secondary: Faith, Hope, Charity.