that we have nothing to do with philosophy, or with the advance of
science. Religion is a feeling of which he alone who possesses it can
give account. He alone who has it can appreciate such an account when
given. We acknowledge that religion is in part a feeling. But that
feeling must have rational justification. It must also have rational
guidance if it is to be saved from degenerating into fanaticism.

To say that we have nothing to do with philosophy ends in our having to
do with a bad philosophy. In that case we have a philosophy with which
we operate without having investigated it, instead of having one with
which we operate because we have investigated it. The philosophy of
which we are aware we have. The philosophy of which we are not aware has
us. No doubt, we may have religion without philosophy, but we cannot
formulate it even in the rudest way to ourselves, we cannot communicate
it in any way whatsoever to others, except in the terms of a philosophy.
In the general sense in which every man has a philosophy, this is merely
the deposit of the regnant notions of the time. It may be amended or
superseded, and our theology with it. Yet while it lasts it is our one
possible vehicle of expression. It is the interpreter and the critique
of what we have experienced. It is not open to a man to retreat within
himself and say, I am a Christian, I feel thus, I think so, these
thoughts are the content of Christianity. The consequence of that
position is that we make the religious experience to be no part of the
normal human experience. If we contend that the being a Christian is the
great human experience, that the religious life is the true human life,
we must pursue the opposite course. We must make the religious life
coherent with all the other phases and elements of life. If we would
contend that religious thought is the truest and deepest thought, we
must begin at this very point. We must make it conform absolutely to the
laws of all other thought. To contend for its isolation, as an area by