It has been a natural opinion in the learned world that religion is to be reckoned among the activities and the products of the intellectual life. Its deepest intention, it has been thought, is to dispel the darkness that broods over man and his universe, and to furnish a working solution of the great insistent problems. With this was usually associated the thesis that the origin of religion was an intellectual achievement—that in the exercise of his rational powers man arrived at the conviction of the existence of a Divine Being, and then proceeded to make applications of the truth by engaging in worship. This interpretation received some encouragement from Protestant Theology, which defined religion as the knowledge and worship of God, and also from the eighteenth-century Rationalism, which taught that the ideas of God, duty and immortality are known by the light of nature, and form a substratum of truth that underlies the pagan superstitions and the ecclesiastical dogmas. Hegel emphasised still more strongly the theoretical aspect of religious endeavour. ‘The object of religion,’ he says, ‘is the same as that of philosophy—eternal truth in its objectivity, God and nothing but God and the explication of God.’1 The two, it was said, had cast their thoughts in different moulds, and they addressed different audiences, but they dealt with the same subject-matter, and they had reached essentially the same conclusions as to the nature of God and the relations of God and man. The same view of the intention of religion was held by Auguste Comte—but with the difference that while Hegel declared that the main religious position has been confirmed by philosophy, Comte affirmed that it has been discredited and superseded by the scientific view of existence. ‘At the theological stage,’ he says. ‘the human spirit directed its researches to the inmost nature of objects, to first causes and final causes; and it represented phenomena as produced by the direct and continuous activity of supernatural agents, more or less numerous, whose arbitrary intervention explains all the apparent anomalies of the universe.’2 In his view the type of causal explanation represented by religion was suited to the childhood of the race, and it served a useful purpose as a stimulus to thought; but later on it was displaced by the metaphysical theory, which assigned the rôle of causes to abstract principles or forces, and this in its turn has yielded to the Positivist Philosophy, which is content to study phenomena and to register the uniformities that mark their occurrence. In the general discussion at the conclusion of The Golden Bough, Sir James Frazer gives great prominence to the theoretical contribution of religion. Like Comte, he recognises three types of thinking, but alters the scheme by prefixing a magical stage and dropping out the metaphysical.

‘We shall perhaps be disposed to conclude,’ he says, ‘that the movement of the higher thought has on the whole been from magic through religion to science. In magic man depends on his own strength to meet the difficulties and dangers that beset him on every side. He believes in a certain established order of nature on which he can surely count, and which he can manipulate for his own ends. When he discovers his mistake, he ceases to rely on his own intelligence and his own unaided efforts, and throws himself humbly on the mercy of certain great invisible beings behind the veil of nature, to whom he now ascribes all these far-reaching powers which he once arrogated to himself. But as time goes on this explanation in its turn proves unsatisfactory. The keener minds, still pressing forward to a deeper solution of the mysteries of the universe, come to reject the religious theory of nature as inadequate, and to revert in a measure to the older standpoint of magic by postulating explicitly what in magic had only been implicitly assumed—to wit, an inflexible regularity in the order of natural events which, if desired, enables us to foresee their course with certainty and to act accordingly.’

Frazer further differs from Comte in holding that, while the hope of progress in the future is bound up with the progress of science, it is possible that as science has supplanted its predecessors, so it may hereafter itself be superseded by some more perfect hypothesis, perhaps by some totally different way of looking at the phenomena.3 The cognate thesis that primitive religion sprang from an intellectual root has also had some countenance from the Science of Religion. ‘As a self-conscious and rationally-thinking being,’ said Tiele in one of his early writings, ‘man necessarily brings his lot and his life, all that happens to himself and to his fellow-men, into relations with causes that are outside of him, or powers that are above him. This was the origin of religion; for as soon as he conceived of such a power he felt the practical need of placing himself in relations with it.’4

The intellectual theory has been attacked from very different quarters, and it has now fallen into general disrepute. It was rejected by Hume on psychological and historical grounds, and by Schleier-macher in the name of piety. And the verdict of the Science of Religion has been cast against it with ever-growing emphasis. In his later writings Tiele laid the greatest stress on the practical intention of religion; and in his general pronouncement, as we saw Frazer gives the primacy to the practical purpose by defining religion as ‘the propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man, which are believed to direct and control the course of nature and of human life.’5 Especially is the notion scouted that in the beginning man reasoned himself into a belief in a Divine Being.

‘The theory that from the beginning religion has been a pure affair of the understanding,’ says Pfleiderer, ‘intellectual in intention though in the result utterly erroneous, that it had nothing to do with feeling and with practical needs and demands, no root in an imagination touched with emotion, is the most ill-founded hypothesis that has been propounded, save only that which proclaimed the idea of God to have been an arbitrary invention.’6

To affirm that in his religious strivings man has been chiefly concerned to extend his knowledge, is undoubtedly to misrepresent the deepest intention of religion, and to miss the secret of its universal appeal and driving power. Its primary and characteristic aim, as we have seen, is not knowing but being and well-being; and, as in other fields, the normal state of things has been that religious knowledge has been coveted and cherished as a form of power which was necessary to success in a great endeavour. But it is hardly less patent that the quest of salvation has been persistently accompanied by the desire of knowledge for the sake of knowledge. There is a theoretical impulse which is deeply rooted in human nature. The ordinary person, no doubt, chiefly values the knowledge which will bring him palpable advantage or pleasure, but he has also the disposition which, in Dr. Johnson’s words, ‘prompts the mind to study and inquiry rather by the uneasiness of ignorance than the hope of profit.’ As curiosity can prompt commonplace people to the pursuit of ‘barren knowledge’ regarding the circumstances and the antecedents of their neighbours, it would have been very surprising if it had not been excited and fostered by objects which loomed upon them out of a supernatural realm with a combination of grandeur and mystery. And there has always been a class in which this natural impulse has been of unusual strength. A modern nation produces in every generation a measurable percentage of minds gifted with the tastes and the capacities out of which education evolves the scientist or the philosopher; and there is no reason to doubt that from a very early period the ancestral tribes gave birth to a similar proportion of persons who found meditation a congenial task, and who, as the modern opportunities of reading and research were not available, devoted their intellectual powers to reflection on the myths and the doctrines of a religious tradition, and made for their personal satisfaction their own contribution of criticism and speculation.

The two main positions which have been taken up by religious thinkers are that a knowledge of divine things is a condition of attaining the blessings promised in religion, and that this knowledge is itself a possession of great value. These positions have, however, been maintained with varying degrees of strength and confidence. There are in fact three estimates of the importance of religious knowledge which have followed one another as if in a cycle that was predetermined by some secret law of the spiritual world. The normal attitude in the great ages has been that, along with the utility, the independent value of religious knowledge has been affirmed. Upon this has commonly followed a second stage in which exaggerated ideas prevailed as to the importance of religious knowledge in comparison with the other contents of salvation. And to this usually succeeded the stage of depreciation in which knowledge fell from its high estate.

I

Knowledge has been held to be necessary in some degree as the presupposition or the support of each of the typical forms of religious aspiration. When the end of religion has been conceived as the attainment of a salvation, it has naturally been held to be necessary to have knowledge of man’s actual condition, of the nature and the purposes of God, and especially of the means of deliverance. When the sum of religion has been construed as the discharge of duty towards God, it has seemed to be no less necessary to know the law of God, and also the means whereby the will may be inclined to obedience and bent to resignation. Obviously also knowledge is needed to nourish love: while the human soul can be stricken with a trembling love of the God who is unknown, or is only known by some blinding flashes of His majesty, in the ordinary course divine love is fostered and deepened by observation of the beauties and the excellences or the Divine Being, and by dwelling on the proof of His loving-kindness and tender mercy.

Under the sway of the religions of nature the conditions of the human lot are felt to be as obscure as they are perilous, and it is usually supposed that much knowledge and skill are needed for coping with the difficult situation. At the polytheistic level there are numerous deities whose claims have to be weighed and adjusted, and which have to be suitably propitiated. The ordinary man was insufficient for these things; and by an anticipation of the principle of the division of labour, it was made the business of a special class to know what might be known of the higher powers, and to master the details of the rites by which the religious relationship was established and cemented. The estimate set on the importance of the expert lore and skill is reflected in the extraordinary prestige and influence that were attained by the ancient priesthoods—notably in Egypt and in India. The stage of depreciation was reached with the rise of ethical religion. It was characteristic of the higher faiths that they gave popular currency to the essential elements of religious knowledge, and that they thus challenged the value of the sacred learning and the ritualistic skill which were the treasured monopoly of a sacerdotal caste. When the universal religions propagated a gospel which contained the sum of saving knowledge, the layman could feel that his position had been levelled up to that of the priest, and that what he bad not come to know was not greatly worth knowing.

With the higher faiths the cycle began anew with a strong affirmation of the necessity of knowledge in order to salvation. Knowledge may be said to have been the watchword of Brahmanism. ‘Bodies (when defiled),’ said the Brahmanist, ‘are purified by water, the mind is purified (from evil) thoughts by truth, the soul is freed (from worldly vanity) by sacred learning and austerities, the understanding (when unable to resolve some doubt) by knowledge.’7 ‘Knowledge releases from all sin, and destroys the foot of all evil.’8 ‘As water does not cling to a lotus-leaf, so no evil deed clings to one who knows it (Brahman).’9 Buddhism was also the religion of the enlightened. ‘By the javelin of my knowledge,’ said the Bhikshu, ‘will I slay all my evil dispositions.’10 And the misery in which existence is steeped was traced to ignorance as its ultimate source. In the noble truths suffering had been declared to be rooted in craving; and when the matter was probed more deeply, craving was found to be rooted in ignorance. ‘Ignorance is the great folly by which this existence is prolonged, but those beings who resort to knowledge do not go to rebirth.’11

Knowledge, then, was essential to salvation, and the knowledge of divine things was elaborated into a system of religious Philosophy. And this gave rise to serious difficulty; for while religion was for man as man, the knowledge demanded presupposed no little intellectual labour, and also no mean intellectual power, and it was therefore found necessary to recognise degrees of knowledge and ignorance, and to promise corresponding grades of satisfaction. ‘The world of men can be gained by a son only. By sacrifice the world of the fathers, by knowledge the world of the devas is gained. The world of the devas is the best of the worlds, therefore they praise knowledge.’12 Brahmanism, accordingly, accepted action, in the form of sacrifices and good works, from those who lacked leisure and ability for the acquisition of knowledge; and it also conceded to the ordinary man, who was unable to rise to the conception of the Infinite Being, the title to worship God in polytheistic and idolatrous forms. The doctrines of Buddhism were more level to ordinary human capacity; for it needs no great ability to grasp the message that life is a calamity, that we have brought our misery on ourselves, and that the way of escape is to cultivate self-denial, to perform one’s duties, and to be kindly withal to man and beast. The depreciation of knowledge may also be thought to be exemplified in the Yoga-discipline which sought to induce an ecstatic condition in which thought was transcended. Moreover, Brahmanism ceased to be bound up with any distinctive doctrine of God: a Brahman, provided he obeyed the customs of his people, could break with the pantheistic Philosophy and choose between Atheism and Theism, could believe or disbelieve in personal immortality, and had also much latitude as to the conception he might form of the content of the chief good which was to be realised in time and eternity.

The stress laid on saving knowledge was a marked feature of Hebrew Prophecy. The instrument of the prophets was the enlightening word, and they imputed to ignorance the national backslidings and the calamities which avenged them. ‘My people,’ says Hosea, ‘is destroyed for lack of knowledge,’ and he complains that ‘there is no truth nor knowledge of God in the land’ (iv. 1). In the Messianic Age, said Isaiah, ‘the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea’ (xi. 9). Jeremiah promised to the people ‘shepherds which shall feed them with their knowledge’ (iii. 15). The Wisdom Literature pitched the intellectual demands still higher. In the time of our Lord the Rabbinical Schools attached such value to theological learning as to declare that ‘this multitude which knoweth not the law are accursed’ (John vii. 49). In the history of the chosen people the process of degeneration was, however, checked by the instruction that was given in the synagogue and in its annexe of the school, and by the responsibility that was put on the head of the family for the religious education of the young. The chief evidence of a disparagement of religious knowledge is the popularity of the opinion, denounced by John the Baptist, that it was a sufficient title to God’s favour to be a descendant of Abraham (Matt. iii. 9).

Christianity began with the reaffirmation of the prophetic doctrine of the necessity of saving knowledge. Faith was required as the condition of salvation, and this faith, while in essence trust in God, presupposed a knowledge of the character of God, of the conditions of salvation, and of His laws and His promises. The importance which Jesus attached to enlightenment is made clear by the fact that He made it the chief business of His ministry to preach and to teach. ‘How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed?’—so Paul explains his missionary zeal—‘and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?’ (Rom. x. 14). As in the creation of the world the first word of God was ‘Let there be light,’ so in the new creation His first act was ‘to shine into our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ’ (2 Cor. iv. 6). In the Johannine writings salvation is life and light, and the gospel is the gift of life because it is first the gift of light. ‘My words,’ said Jesus, ‘they are spirit, and they are life’ (vi. 63). ‘Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free’ (viii. 32).

But while it was made clear that knowledge was essential, it remained a question as to bow much knowledge was to be demanded. In the Apostolic Age the requirement was knowledge of the great facts of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ (1 Cor. xv. 1), and of the duty of repentance and of faith towards God (Heb. vi. 1). The Apostles’ Creed, which was compiled in its shorter form for the guidance of catechumens about the middle of the second century, gives a summary of the events of the life of Christ in a framework of elementary doctrine. In the succeeding centuries controversy deepened the sense of the importance of the doctrinal system, and saving knowledge was declared to embrace the Catholic dogmas as these had been defined by the Councils in opposition to the heretical schools. ‘Whosoever will be saved,’ so the finding was expressed in the Athanasian Creed, ‘before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic faith, which faith except every one do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly.’ The Creed then goes on to an exposition, with some debt to Augustine, of the Nicene dogma of the Trinity, and to a recapitulation of the heads of the Chalcedonian dogma of the Person of Christ. And to hold the Catholicfaith, naturally meant to know and understand it. But when this position was reached it became necessary to adopt an auxiliary theory out of regard to the facts of the ecclesiastical situation. For it was obviously absurd to expect the illiterate masses of the Middle Ages to hold the theological doctrines of the Creeds in a sense that could be credibly described as knowledge—and the more so since there was not a staff of teachers able to impart this instruction. And on the other hand the Church was responsible for the souls of the ignorant people, and comforted them with the assurance of their title to the mercy of God and with the hope of eternal salvation. The difficulty was overcome by the theory of implicit faith, which was reckoned to the faithful member of the Church as a kind of vicarious knowledge. It is true that the responsible teachers demanded an explicit faith of considerable compass. According to Thomas Aquinas there must be knowledge of the primary articles. ‘As regards other matters of belief,’ he says, ‘a man is only required to believe implicitly, or by mental preparation, in so far that he is required to believe what Scripture teaches.’13 But in practice it came to be thought sufficient to be willing to believe what the Church taught, and docility was thus accepted as the substitute for knowledge. The situation was further relieved by the development of the sacramental system under which the temporal and eternal blessings of the Christian salvation could be appropriated without any co-operation from the instructed and thinking mind.

A similar course has been run in Protestantism, and the same difficulty has emerged. The Reformers set themselves to reinstate knowledge properly so-called as a condition of salvation. They taught that salvation is by faith, and that faith is essentially trust, but they also held that it had an intellectual content, and they insisted on full acquaintance with the presuppositions and the provisions of the gospel. ‘The Scholastics,’ says Calvin, ‘invented an implicit faith, as they called it, which was nothing but a decorative name for the crassest ignorance. Faith is rooted, not in ignorance, but in knowledge—and that a knowledge, not merely of God but of the divine will. As if, forsooth, Scripture did not everywhere teach that intelligence has been conjoined with faith.’14 On the other hand, the tendency was to confine the necessary knowledge within the limits of saving knowledge. In the sub-Reformation period the saving knowledge required was conceived to embrace an elaborate scheme of fundamental doctrines.

‘By the fundamental doctrines,’ says Turretin, ‘we understand the essential dogmas of the Christian faith, belief in which is absolutely necessary for believers, and which one may not be ignorant of or deny without loss of salvation. It is agreed by all that the fundamental articles are the doctrines of inspired Holy Scripture as the one and perfect rule of faith, of God one and triune, of Christ the Redeemer and His perfect satisfaction, of sin and death as the wages of sin, of the law and its importance for salvation, of justification by faith, of grace and the necessity of good works to sanctification and the worship of God, of the Church, of the resurrection of the dead, of the last judgment and eternal life, and any other doctrines which are bound up with these.’15

The Lutheran theologians of the same period gave similar lists of the primary fundamental articles of which ‘the distinct knowledge is so necessary for faith and salvation that it is impossible for faith to be generated and conserved in those who are ignorant of them, and also impossible for them to attain to eternal life.’16 But the Protestant Church in its turn found it was impossible to procure from the general body of its membership an adequate response to the high-pitched demands of the theological theory. Earnest efforts were indeed made to give effect to its convictions as to the paramount importance of doctrinal enlightenment. The reading and the preaching of the Word were given the central place in public worship, the Christian home was requisitioned along with the school as the instrument of religious instruction, and when the home proved a disappointment in this regard its services were supplemented by an elaborate organisation of Sunday schools. In later times great efforts have been made to minister to those of weaker capacity by disseminating essential religious knowledge in the form of the tract and the story. Yet it cannot be said that the efforts have had the success of making a definite body of Christian facts and doctrines common property. This has indeed been accomplished in some sections of the Christian community. The Evangelical School expounded a theology which, besides taking possession of the class of converts, in some periods has also illuminated and impressed the general mind. The Anglo-Catholic School has a very definite doctrinal scheme which has awakened a similar response within narrower limit The conception of Christianity as consisting in belief in God, the hope of immortality and a sense of duty—with Christ as its teacher and example—has been somewhat widely diffused since the eighteenth century in the national Churches and the larger denominations. To these have to be added the recent attempts to popularise essential Christianity in the form of the love or the following of Jesus. But while no school has laboured in vain, it appears from recent investigations that the average mind is darkened and confused, and that the Protestant Church, which set out to make of every member a considerable theologian, has on its hands a multitude of members and adherents, including many intelligent and educated people, who have the vaguest ideas as to what Christianity requires them to believe, what it proposes to do for them, and what claim it makes upon their life.17 The Anglican Church has adapted itself to some extent to the situation by falling back on the medieval theory of an implicit faith which is helped out by the mechanism of sacraments. In other Churches no better way has been discovered than to forget the wide gulf which exists between the rigid traditional theory and an ecclesiastical practice that has drifted to the utmost limits of latitudinarian toleration.

II

The knowledge of divine things has been sought, not merely as a condition of salvation, but also as itself a good, and as a satisfaction to the soul. It has, besides, been felt to be a part of duty to God to know what has been revealed of Him, and there are those who have even considered knowledge of God to be the chiefest part of salvation.

It is difficult to suppose that man has ever been without an impulse to seek knowledge for its own sake. It is now generally denied that the theoretical interest had anything to do with the origination of religion, but at least it had something to do with the welcome which it received after it came into existence. And it may even be thought that the possibility of reflection having been one of the roots of religion has been too summarily dismissed. Since primitive man, like many of the animals, was full of curiosity, he must have felt the need of framing some conception of the meaning of the strange scene in which he found himself, and also of how he and his world and the things therein had come into being. It is usually thought convincing to say that prehistoric man had not the intellectual powers that were needed for framing an aetiological or teleological argument, but he must have been quite capable, as a child is, of inferring that some one had made the earth and the mountains, the rivers and the trees—even as he himself could build a hut and make a tool—and that some of the good and the evil happenings in his life and his surroundings were to be set down, equally with those which occurred in his relations with his fellow-men, to the activities of unseen friends and foes.

Animism was a comprehensive scheme of thought, and the desire for knowledge was undoubtedly a factor in the development of each branch of the animistic encyclopaedia. Polytheism was associated with the developing civilisations, one of whose marks was the growth of the theoretical interest, and this interest naturally extended to divine things. The attitude of the thoughtful pagan is illustrated by Bede’s report of the visit of Paulinus, the Christian missionary, to the court of King Eadwine. There was a debate about the true religion, and at the outset the chief priest applied the criterion of utility. Their pagan religion, he said, was without virtue or profit; and he supported his thesis by pointing out that he had devoted himself most zealously to the service of the gods, and yet had received from his king lesser gifts and dignities than had gone to others who had made no show of piety. The noble who followed him was no better satisfied with the religion of his fathers, but gave as the ground of his complaint that it threw no light on the whence and the whither of man, and advised that if the Christian religion brought light into the darkness it should be believed and obeyed. It was within the pale of the priesthoods that the inquiring and speculative spirit was chiefly fostered in the ages before the rise of the classical culture. The members of the sacerdotal class may be supposed to have differed as widely in intellectual taste and capacity as a body of modern clergy, and there must always have been a number who found in their sacred vocation the opportunity for the pursuit of knowledge, and to whom divine things were the most interesting of all. Of this there is evidence in the ancient cosmogonies, elaborated under religious auspices, which usually subserved the practical purpose of supporting an optimistic view of life, and annexing sanctions to existing institutions and laws, but which also had something of the exploring spirit of Philosophy. The Babylonian cosmogony shows that thousands of years before our era gifted minds were impelled to try to understand their religion better, and also to make use of it for the better comprehension of the scheme of things; and answers that are not wholly grotesque and futile were given to the same questions touching the what, the how and the why of things visible and invisible, that were to receive answers from the Metaphysics and the Sciences of a later day. But it was above all the Aryan stock in which the primitive curiosity developed into the disinterested quest of knowledge. And it was a people of the Aryan family which first clearly declared that knowledge of God was of itself a priceless possession. For the saintly philosophers of the Upanishads meditation was the highest and the most blissful exercise of human faculty. ‘The ancients who perceived the established (truth) call knowledge the highest happiness.’18 They left the study of the objects and the laws of nature to the economic man, and took little or no interest in the events of political history, but for this neglect they had the sublime reason to render that God was the one Being worth knowing. To the acquisition of this highest knowledge they felt impelled by an inward constraint. ‘That from which all things are born,’ it was said, ‘they desire to know. That is Brahman.’19 ‘The complete comprehension of Brahman,’ it is declared, ‘is the highest good of man.’20 The knowledge of God was not merely the condition of salvation: it was itself salvation, for ‘he that knows that highest Brahman, he is already Brahman.’21 And yet in their ignorance men wandered about like beggars among unsuspected treasures that they might claim if only they knew. ‘Just as he finds not the hid treasures who knows not the place, though he goes over it again and again, so do not these creatures find the world of Brahman, though they enter it every day.’22 The same spirit asserted itself in Buddhism. Gautama, it is true, had no theology on which to meditate, and he discouraged speculation which had no bearing on conduct and destiny. But his gospel of deliverance rested on an elaborate and confident metaphysic which called for further elucidation and stimulated speculative thought, and in the later development the highest value came to be attached to the Buddhistic treasures of wisdom and of knowledge. From the Questions of King Milinda, it appears that it was the pride of the Arhat to solve every problem that could trouble the seeker, and to repel every objection that might be propounded by the doubter and the scoffer. Even to the superficial student of the literature it is clear that the Indian mind has devoted immense and unwearied labours, and also great powers of analytical and abstract thinking, in the same fields in which the thinkers of the West found the materials with which to build their systems of Mental Science, of Metaphysics and of Dogmatic Theology. And these labours were held in the highest honour. In Europe the warrior-class formerly ranked as the highest, while in the latter days it has been overshadowed by the plutocracy; but India clung to the ancient opinion that the Brahmanical caste, which combined learning and thinking with piety, had been placed by Heaven above both the Kshatriyas and the Vaisyas. In this Indian estimate of the dignity of knowledge we reach the stage of exaggeration, and the customary reactions followed. Some of the thinkers arrived at the conclusion that nothing is known and can be known of the ultimate reality—which might be deemed the eventual apotheosis of ignorance. Many earnest souls were of opinion that to be good and to do good was a greater thing than to know the good—even to know God. And recently the opinion has gained ground in certain circles that a chapter of a scientific text-book is of more value than all the wisdom of the guru.

Christianity claimed to be a revelation which completed an earlier revelation, and it was natural that the revealed doctrine should be highly treasured—apart from the spiritual profit—because of its divine origin and its value as truth. The Hebrew prophets gloried in their message as a gift from God, and we can trace in the Old Testament a growing appreciation of the independent value of spiritual knowledge. It would, indeed, have been strange if the Old Testament Scriptures had revealed nothing of the intellectual aspirations of the race which has made a deep mark on modern Philosophy through the speculative genius of Spinoza, and which has enriched modern Science by important contributions in every department of Natural and Social Science. The scientific ideal was perfectly familiar to the later Hebrew sages. It was illustrated by the picture of Solomon who, it was said, gave his heart to seek and search out by wisdom all things that are done under Heaven (Eccles. i. 13). The Hebrew thinker also felt the fascination of problems of origin. ‘My heart was set to know, and to search out and to seek wisdom, and the reason of things’ (vii. 25). It was even said, ‘wisdom is the principal thing, and none of the things thou canst desire are to be compared unto her’ (Prov. iv. 7; iii. 15). And naturally the highest kind of knowledge—the knowledge of God and of His ways—received the benefit of this valuation. The thinking of the Old Testament writers, it is true, was in the main apologetic. But there was also disinterested meditation on the and the attributes of God, and in reflection on the wisdom and the word of God thoughts were uttered which were to be an important factor in the intellectual process which eventually replaced the old monotheism by the Christian doctrine of the triune God.

The teaching of the New Testament follows the same lines, and it similarly recognises, and with growing emphasis, that knowledge has a high rank among the blessings of the gospel. The discourses of Jesus, no doubt, rebuke the piety which exhausts itself in the labours of the intellect. He discouraged unprofitable curiosity; He spoke hard words of those who sat in Moses’ seat, and were called Rabbi; and He warned the disciples against the temptation to make knowledge a substitute for living up to it. But Jesus also taught that knowledge of the Father was one of the high privileges of the Son, which He handed on to the children of the Kingdom (Matt. xi. 27). And he gave an honourable place to the scribe who hath been made a disciple to the Kingdom of Heaven, and who is ‘like unto a householder which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old’ (Matt. xiii. 52). St. Paul taught that man chiefly needs power, and that light is not necessarily power, but he had himself a mind which hungered for knowledge, comprehended particular objects and events in large views, and sought satisfaction in the discovery of proximate and first causes. It was not the least of his reasons for glorying in the gospel, that Christ was the wisdom of God, and had enriched him with treasures of wisdom and of knowledge; and it was no small part of the promised bliss of Heaven, that he who now saw through a glass darkly would then see face to face, and would know even as also he was known (1 Cor. xiii. 12). In the Johannine writings knowledge is still more highly exalted. Eternal life, the supreme blessing of the gospel, is defined in terms of an intellectual good—this is life eternal, to know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent (John xvii. 3). And one of the great sayings was the promise of the Spirit who would lead into all the truth (xvi. 13).

In the Christian Church the normal view has been that the revelation of God in Christ is a great theoretical possession as well as the means of salvation. But also in the history of the Church there has been a frequent clash of the intellectualist and the non-intellectual sympathies, with a recurring oscillation between the gnostic and the anti-gnostic positions. The cycle of appreciation, exaggeration and depreciation has been twice traversed—first in the period from the Apostolic Age to the Reformation, and again in the period from the Reformation to modern times. The original attitude of the Church was that which is mirrored in the New Testament—reverent appreciation of the treasures of wisdom and knowledge that came by Jesus Christ. To this succeeded the exaggeration of the patristic and the scholastic eras. A conspicuous feature of the patristic Church was the zealous and impassioned exaltation of doctrine in the long-drawn controversies. No doubt on a close examination all the great doctrinal conflicts are seen to have had a bearing on salvation, but the zeal was intensified by a sense of the inestimable value of revealed truth, and of the high privilege of labouring for the victory and the defence of the truth. This standpoint was represented in general by those of the fathers who had inherited the intellectual tradition of Greece along with the faith once delivered to the saints. They set forth Christianity as the divinely-revealed Philosophy—and this not only because the apologist could hope so to commend it to the cultured world of the time, hut also because of their experience that the great salvation had fully met the needs of their minds by its sublime and illuminating doctrines. Sorely as the world needed it, Aristotle had not been able to include in his writings a treatise on religion, and they rejoiced that such a book was now in their hands, inspired by Him who is the Eternal Word and Wisdom of God. This baptism of the gospel with the Hellenic spirit is perhaps best represented by Clement of Alexandria. His favourite name for the superior Christian is the Gnostic. He deems the contemplative life the highest, he is erudite, and even aspires to possess universal knowledge. If at any time he has leisure he applies himself to Philosophy in preference to any other recreation, looking on it as the dessert after the supper which has been provided by the Wisdom of God.23 Righteousness and holiness are indeed conjoined with wisdom in the Christian summum bonum, but knowledge can on occasion be set above all else that enters into or accompanies salvation.

‘For I will dare aver,’ says Clement, ‘that it is not because he wishes to be saved that he who devotes himself to knowledge for the sake of the divine science itself chooses knowledge.… Could we suppose any one proposing to the Gnostic whether he would choose the knowledge of God or everlasting salvation; and if these, which are entirely identical, were separable, he would without the least hesitation choose the knowledge of God, deeming that property of faith, which from love ascends to knowledge, desirable for its own sake.’24

The greatest of the Scholastics taught with Aristotle that happiness is the highest good, and that happiness is realised ‘in the exercise of that part or faculty which apprehends things noble and divine, and consists in speculation or contemplation.’25 ‘Happiness,’ says Thomas Aquinas, ‘is nothing else than delight in the truth.’26 The happiness which is attainable here below consists firstly and principally in contemplation; secondly, in the operations of the practical reason in the regulation of human actions and passions. The final and perfected happiness of Heaven will consist wholly in contemplation.27 Theology, he held, was a pure Science, whose object was truth, although like other sciences it had its practical applications. Scholasticism may be generally described as a colossal and long-sustained intellectual effort which was inspired by the belief that the God who made man in His own image had designed him to the dignity of becoming His fellow-thinker, and had invited him to the crowning task of combining all natural knowledge with that received from on high in a magnificent, temple of truth. Hut while this position was truly imposing, it was also vulnerable, and in the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries it was assailed from two sides. For it could be said that the Scholastics were wrong in thinking that knowledge was the principal thing, and that if it was the principal thing their claim to possess it was dubious. The principle of the primacy of knowledge was challenged by the mystical doctrine that the highest good is a vital union with God in which the mind was emptied and darkened; and it was likewise disputed by loving souls who were of opinion that the knowledge of doctrines and mysteries was a lesser thing than to be Christlike, and to minister to their brethren of mankind in their sins and sorrows. And doubts arose as to the value of the knowledge that had been the fruit of the intellectual travail. In his treatise, Sic et Non, Abelard set over against one another the contradictory opinions of the recognised authorities, Duns Scotus maintained that revelation had been given for practical guidance rather than for scientific enlightenment, and Gabriel Biel taught that what was true in Theology might be philosophical error. The two lines of criticism were combined by the Reformers. The notion that the contemplative life is the highest, it was held, was a pagan not a Christian ideal. God had sent His Son into the world to save sinners and build up saints, not to make philosophers. And what, it was asked, had been the outcome of the labours of these men who had given their hearts to know?

‘What has been achieved,’ asked Melanchthon, ‘during many centuries by the scholastic theologians in their discussion of God, of His unity and trinity, of the mystery of creation, of the manner of the incarnation? Shall we not say that, in the words of Scripture, they became vain in their imaginations, or spent their lives in frivolous talk of universals, formalities, connotations and other empty terms? And their folly might not have mattered, were it not that these foolish disputations of theirs darkened the gospel, and concealed the benefits purchased by Christ.’28

In the Protestant period the same stages have been recapitulated. The Reformers sought to recall the Church to the sober Gnosticism of primitive Christianity. Though they held that knowledge could be rated too high, they also held that truth was a priceless part of the Christian heritage which it was a duty to confess, and for which it was glorious to suffer. They were primarily exponents of a scheme of salvation; but they also deemed themselves the stewards of a body of supernaturally communicated knowledge, which gave a view of existence as a whole, of the powers at work in the universe, and of the meaning and goal of creation. And they gladly travelled the philosophical road so long as the Bible served as a lamp to their path. If in the first instance they had been content to expound the Pauline epistles, Melanchthon soon felt the need of giving a conjunct view of the essential doctrines, and Calvin elaborated the materials in a comprehensive scheme which had the character of an all-embracing system of religious Philosophy. The sub-Reformation period was inspired by a profound sense of the importance of doctrinal Christanity. In both branches of the Church, Lutheran and Reformed, there arose a second though a chastened Scholasticism, which was entirely at one with Rome in its exaltation of orthodoxy and its loathing of heresy, toiled unweariedly in the work of analysing, developing and systematising the doctrinal inheritance, and gloried in the possession of a system of thought which, bearing the divine hall-mark, settled every cardinal issue which is raised for human thought in regard to God and the world, duty and destiny. And this high estimate of religious knowledge, with the accompanying note of a confident Gnosticism, has been continued in various Protestant schools down to recent times. The attitude was long maintained in the evangelical section of the Reformed Church, and was as strongly represented in the nineteenth century by the Systematic Theology of Charles Hodge, as it had been in the seventeenth century by Turretin’s Theologia Elenctica. The Lutheran Church, also, has had its Confessional School, represented in last century by Philippi and Luthardt, which proudly stood in the old paths. Hegel regarded the great dogmas as the soul and crown of Christianity—pouring scorn on the theologians who defended a Christianity which they had previously impoverished beyond recognition; and the theological school which acknowledged his influence has been distinguished by its assertion of the depth and value of the fundamental doctrines of a philosophically construed Christianity. Modern Protestantism has, however, on the whole been identified with the depreciation of religious knowledge. From the overweening intellectualism of Protestant Scholasticism there was a swift and deep descent to the eighteenth-century Deism, which reduced the creed to the articles of God and immortality, and cut down the plan of salvation to the requirement of virtuous conduct. The Critical Philosophy seriously contributed to the disparagement of Dogmatic Theology. Kant, it is true, offered a vindication of the doctrines of the divinity of Christ and of the Atonement, but only after interpreting them as parts of his ethical Philosophy; and it has generally been felt, whether justifiably or not, that postulates of the practical reason are not entitled to the same respect as truths which claim to be truths in the old-fashioned sense, and on old-fashioned grounds. The anti-intellectual reaction was also effectively promoted in a religious interest. German Pietism, as was said, laid the chief emphasis on conversion and fellowship with the risen Lord; and while magnifying the truth as it is in Jesus, it was in-different to speculative and polemical doctrines which had not an obvious hearing on the spiritual life. This tendency was strongly reinforced by Schleiermacher, whose identification of religion with devout feeling involved the deposition of Theology from its high estate. He satirised the dominant rationalistic Theology as ‘an ill-stitched patchwork of Metaphysics and Ethics,’ and he was no more conciliatory towards Hegel than towards the Rationalismus Vulgaris. Schleiermacher went on, indeed, to construct an elaborate system of Dogmatic Theology; but it might not unfairly be described as rather a system of Religious Psychology, since he conceived the task of the theologian to be exhausted in a description of the states of Christian experience, and the attempt to trace them to their causes. The same type of thought has recurred in the French School of Symbolo-Fideism, and it underlies the Modernism of the Roman Catholic Church. The two streams of tendency met in the Ritschlian School. It was a fundamental principle of the Ritschlian Theology that religious doctrines are exclusively value-judgments—i.e., that they are statements of the worth which God has for the believer as enabling him to attain his chief end, and it was added that while they rest on revelation they have to be rigorously edited in accordance with the data of experience. Kaftan is constantly rebuking the old Theology for supposing that revelation involved the communication to the world of any knowledge of the theoretical and speculative kind. Apart from the influence of these principles, it was seen that certain parts of the inherited systems of doctrine had been undermined by Historical Criticism and Natural Science. And while Theology has shown itself increasingly diffident, the judgment of outsiders has often gone beyond disparagement. Comte, as was observed, declared that it was the chief intention of religion to explain things, and as it was added that its mode of explanation has now been superseded, the inference was that Theology has lost all title to respect. And this opinion has been widely influential.

In conclusion, something may be added on the stages of the recurring cycle, and on the moral which is suggested by the cycle.

The normal estimate, as was said, has been that religious knowledge is not merely a means to an end, but itself a good. This was the attitude of the founders, apostles and prophets of the ethical religions, and it has been characteristic of the periods of origins and revivals to which later generations have looked back as the golden ages. It was indeed natural that great stress was laid on the practical aspect. For those who offered, and also for those who sought a salvation, it was as evident that religious knowledge was indispensable as it is evident to a generation which values material well-being that there is need of a provision for technical education. But also it is impossible to believe that religion is the vehicle of a comprehensive salvation without going on to hold that knowledge of God and divine things is more than a means to an end. For the fundamental article of the religious creed—viz., that in union with God man attains to the highest good, and is delivered from all evil—involves a divine gift of light and deliverance from ignorance. And if knowledge, as ordinary men have usually been willing to admit, and as the race of high-souled men have fervently believed, has an intrinsic worth apart from its profitableness, then a religion which makes an adequate response to human needs and aspirations is bound to include truth among the blessings which are guaranteed to man through the friendship and the grace of God. In fact, every religion that has moved the world has recognised that the intellect, as well as the heart and the will, has a title to have its claims recognised in any adequate salvation, and to receive illumination as an element in the portion of goods which falleth to it.

The exaggeration of the theoretical side of religion has recurred in the secondary period of every great faith, and it has taken the two forms of heightening the demands made for knowledge as a condition of salvation, and magnifying the value of knowledge in comparison with the other blessings of salvation. This valuation has been supported and furthered by the erudite class of disciples, and in some periods it has been sanctioned by the religious community in an extraordinary veneration of orthodoxy, and in the ruthless persecution of heresy. And it is only fair to remember that some things can be said in explanation and justification of the attitude. When the Christian Church had come into existence, it was properly felt that much work had to be done in clarifying and expounding the doctrines that were bound up with its faith, and that if it suffered its teaching to be contaminated by heathen thought it was only a question of time when its life would sink to the heathen level. It was also natural that, when a learned class arose which was specially charged with the custody and the defence of the doctrinal heritage, it should think that the work which had been devolved upon it in the division of spiritual labour excelled all other in dignity and moment. And as a fact, to occupy oneself with religious truth, and to regard this occupation, as was done by Fathers and Scholastics, as the highest that is open to sinful man, is a position which ought to be spoken of respectfully, if theologians are to be judged like other intellectual workers. It is held in other fields to be supremely admirable when one takes for his principle ‘knowledge for the sake of knowledge,’ even if the information which he proceeds to collect be as trivial as it is useless. We admire Browning’s scholar of whom it is written:

He settled ὅτι’s business—let it be,

Properly based οὖν,

Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic δέ

Dead from the waist down.

Still greater respect is accorded to the scientist who devotes his labours to extend man’s knowledge were it only of the inconsiderable odds and ends of our planet. And it is not clear why the world should have come to look contemptuously on School-men, medieval and post-Reformation, who thought that their lives were well spent in busying themselves even with the smallest things in the divine temple, and in seeking to penetrate more deeply into the region of divine mystery, and to suggest possible solutions of its innumerable problems. Moreover, the occupation with religious truth is well entitled to be regarded as a form of the religious life. It would be absurd to say that a man was religious when he prayed to God for fine weather or good health, or for a blessing on his children, but not when he busied himself with treasures of wisdom and knowledge which he revered as revealed truth, and which he sought to understand and appropriate in dependence on the Spirit of truth. And it is possible to think that it was not only a real type of religion, but also a very striking form of piety, when a thinker deemed the light which had shined into our darkness to be God’s greatest gift to man, and did what in him lay, as a child of light and a servant of truth, to show his sense of the value of the divine gift. The only doubt is if the stage of exaggeration reflected the mind of Christ. While to rejoice in the truth is an authentic type of piety, enlightenment is improperly regarded as the highest good in a world of sin and misery which calls for renewal and sanctification as the chiefest need, and which appeals for manifold service in the spirit and after the pattern of the good Samaritan.

The third stage, in which exaggeration is followed by depreciation, can only be described in the light of religious history as pathological. This stage emerged in the evolution of ancient Polytheism, it has been traversed more than once in the history of Indian religions, and there is reason for saying that it has been again reached in the modern development of Christianity. It is a very serious fact that the knowledge of which the Christian Church is the custodian is so little esteemed as knowledge in the world of modern culture. It is still more serious that the Protestant Church has been increasingly identified with the view that knowledge is an excrescence of religion, and that if there be religious knowledge it is only knowledge of a sort. The waning self-confidence of modern Theology is indeed intelligible and to some extent justifiable. It is the penalty which it pays for having been as confidently dogmatic about unimportant things which it did not know as about other things which were of vital importance, and of which it could be absolutely sure. But it is a lesson of history that the life and the power of the Church are dependent on its possession of knowledge about the greatest things, and on its being persuaded that it is real knowledge. A religion cannot be expected to influence the world, or even to hold up its head in it, if it can only touch the feelings and advise people to be good, and does not also teach a set of doctrines which make up a veritable religious Philosophy that lights up the universe, and gives definite answers to the persistent questions as to the nature of God, the relation of the world to God, and the chief end of man and the way of salvation. But if the situation is grave, it is a promise conveyed by history that it is only a transient phase. Every great spiritual movement of the past, which took form in the founding or the reformation of a religion, was bound up with a religious doctrine which led captive the mind of a nation or an age; and there is no reason to believe that the power which has once and again stirred the soul of mankind to its depths has made its last approach or has spent its force. One of the assured lessons of history is that when religion has been most feeble it has been on the eve of renewing its strength, and that when the neighbours have made ready to lay it in the grave it has risen again from the dead. When next this happens there will be as before a definite selection and synthesis of Christian doctrines in which a new generation will rejoice as the assured theoretical content of their religion. And as before, the world will be willing and glad to believe that what came to it with the demonstration of the Spirit and of power bears the stamp of truth.

• 1.

  Philosophie der Religion, ed. Bolland, 1907, Bd. i. p. 17.

• 2.

  Cours de la Philosophie Positive, 1880, i. p. 8.

• 3.

  The Golden Bough (abridged ed.), 1923, chap. lxix. Frazer assumes that Theology has only recognised the hand of God in miracles. He ignores another hypothesis which is very important, and which I think perfect—viz., that God, while ordinarily acting through secondary causes, is nevertheless able to answer prayer and to carry out special purposes.

• 4.

  ‘Theol. Tijdschrift,’ 1875, quoted by Rauwenhoff, Rel. Phil., 1894, p. 44.

• 5.

  Op. cit., p. 20.

• 6.

  Religionsphilosophie, 1878, p. 320.

• 7.

  ‘The Institutes of Vishnu,’ S.B.E., p. 97.

• 8.

  S.B.E., xxxiv. p. 3.

• 9.

  Ibid., i. 67.

• 10.

  Ibid., xxxvi. p. 371.

• 11.

  Ibid., x. 2, p. 134.

• 12.

  S.B.E., xv. pp. 95–6.

• 13.

  Summa, ii. 2, 5.

• 14.

  Institutio, iii. p. 3.

• 15.

  Institutio theologiae elencticae, i. 2, 14.

• 16.

  Luthardt, Dogmatik.

• 17.

  The Army and Religion, 1919.

• 18.

  S.B.E., viii. p. 378.

• 19.

  S.B.E., xxxiv. p. 13.

• 20.

  Mundaka-Upanishad, 3, 2–9, quoted by Deussen, p. 311.

• 21.

  Chandaka-Upanishad, 8, 3–2.

• 22.

  S.B.E., xxiv. p. 14.

• 23.

  Stromateis, vi. 18.

• 24.

  Ibid., iv. 22.

• 25.

  Nicom. Ethics, x. 7.

• 26.

  Summa, i. 23, 4.

• 27.

  Ibid., iii. 4, 5.

• 28.

  Loci Communes, Praefatio.