truth the root of all religion. But the mistake of Orthodoxy has been in confounding truth with doctrine- the sight of the thing with the theory about that sight. From hence come the hardness and coldness of Orthodoxy. Pure thought is always cold, and ought to be. The sight of spiritual things is truth and love in one; but when we begin to reflect on that sight, the love drops out, and the truth becomes cold.

The defect of the Orthodox principle, therefore, is the confusion of truth with belief. Out of this mistake come dogmatism, bigotry, and all their natural consequences. It is therefore well, before going farther, to explain more fully this distinction and its importance.

§ 13. Faith, Knowledge, Belief, Opinion. - Religion originates at every moment, from looking at truth. Now, there are four kinds of looking; faith, which is intuitive looking; knowledge, which is the intuition itself looked at by reflection, and so brought to consciousness; third, belief, which arranges the products of knowledge in systematic form, and makes them congruous with each other; and lastly comes opinion, which does not deal at all with things, but only with thoughts about things. By faith we see God; by knowledge we become conscious that we see God; by belief we arrange in order what we see; and by opinion we feel and grope among our thoughts, seeking what we may find of his works and ways. Every act of faith brings us into the presence of God himself, and makes us partakers of the divine nature. Thus faith is strictly and literally the substance of things hoped for, or the substance of hope.* Substance here has its etymological sense, and is the same word in Greek and English, meaning basis, foundation, support, or substruction. It is the inward experience by which we come in contact with invisible things, as perception is the experience by which we come in contact with visible things.

Heb. 11:1.

These steps of intellectual activity may be called by other names than these. What we (with Jacobi) call faith,* may be denominated "intuition" (with the transcendentalists), reason (with Coleridge), God-consciousness (with Schleiermacher), or anschauungs-vermögen (with Schelling and others). But, by whatever name we call this power, we say there is a power in man by which he can see spiritual facts, as with his earthly senses he can perceive sensible facts. If he has no such power, he is incapable of knowing God, but can only have an opinion that there is a God. But if he can know God, this knowledge rests on something back of reasoning or reflection; it must rest on an intuition or spiritual perception. And this, for our present purpose, we call faith. By means of it we know the spiritual world, just as we know the material world through sight, touch, and hearing. The senses are the organs by which we perceive material things; intuition, or faith, the organ by which we perceive spiritual things. He who denies the existence of such a power in man, falls necessarily into dogmatism on the one hand, or rationalism on the other. But as these words also take a very different sense on different lips, we explain ourselves by saying that he puts either a theory or an inference in the place of God. If orthodox, he puts a theory; if sceptical, an inference. Mr. Mansell does the first, Herbert Spencer the other. Neither of them believes that we can know God's existence. So dogmatism and scepticism join hands. All the consequences described in the beginning of this chapter follow as a matter of course when an opinion or theory is put in the place of truth. Then

* Jacobi - whose words have been said to let the thoughts shine through, as wet clothes around the limbs allow the form to be seen-says that all knowledge begins with faith. Faith is, according to Jacobi, (1) a knowledge proceeding from immediate revelation; (2) knowledge which does not need, and cannot have, proofs; (3) much more certain knowledge than any derived from demonstration; (4) a perception of the super-sensual world; (5) a wellgrounded and reliable prepossession in favor of certain truths; (6) a faith which sees, and a sight which beneves; (7) a vision, an impenetrable mystery, a perception of the thing in itself.

come the inflexible narrowness of bigotry, the hot zeal of the persecutor, the sectarian strife which has torn the Church in twain. The remedy and prevention for these are to recognize that the basis of religion is in faith, in a living sight of God, the soul, duty, immortality, which are always and forever the same.

The best definitions of faith, by theologians of all schools, include the notion of insight, will, and affection. It is an act of the soul by which it looks at truth. But this act implies a desire to see and know the truth. Now, such an act as this lies at the root of all our knowledge, both of the mate rial and spiritual world. How do I know the outward world? The passive exercise of sensation would never give such knowledge. The sights which enter the passive eye, the sounds which fill the passive ear, the feelings which affect the passive sense, give no real knowledge of outward things. That comes, not from sensation merely, but from sensation changed into experience by a voluntary activity. We must not only see, but look; not only hear, but listen; not only feel, but touch, in order to know. Life, therefore, the constant synthesis of these three elements, life which, in every act, at once thinks, feels, and does, -alone gives us knowledge. Divorce thought from affection and will, and let it act by itself, and it does not give knowledge; it only gives belief or opinion. Knowledge comes only from experience -and experience means communion. Communion with Nature by thought, desire, and action gives us the knowledge of Nature; communion with God by thought, desire, and act, gives us the knowledge of God. The organ by which we commune with God is faith; it includes the desire of knowing God, and the act of looking to him in order to know him.

KNOWLEDGE of God, of immortality, and of spiritual things does not come from any process of reasoning on the one hand, nor from any single intuition of reason.

Just so we

do not know the material world by a process of reasoning on the one hand, or any single sensible perception on the other. All knowledge comes from life; or, as the apostle John expresses it, "Life is the light of man." We become acquainted with outward nature by living processes - by repeated acts of sight, hearing, touch, taste. So we become acquainted with the spiritual world by repeated spiritual acts; by repeated processes of faith; by continued steps of devotion, submission, obedience, trust, love, prayer. In this way we come to know God just as certainly, and just in the same way, as we know things visible or things audible.

But knowledge is not belief. Knowledge is the rooted conviction of the reality of certain facts or persons, derived from communing with those facts or persons. Belief is the intellectual assent to a proposition - a proposition formed by analytic and synthetic methods. We analyze our notion concerning any subject, and then arrange the results of this analysis in order, and deduce from them a proposition, a law. This we call our belief, or creed, concerning it. The substance of this belief is given us in life; the form of it comes from thinking or reasoning. But it is evident that such a belief differs in each individual according to his experience, and according to his habits of reasoning, and even according to his facility in expression. Moreover, knowledge and belief differ also in this, that knowledge places us in the presence of the reality, belief only in the presence of a proposition concerning it.

Thus John and James are friends. John knows James through a long intercourse. He is just as certain in regard to the essential character of James as he is about his own. But if he tries to express this knowledge of James in the form of belief, he may evidently express it badly. He may fail from a defective analysis, or from imperfect powers of language.

On the other hand John may not know James at all. He

may never have seen him. But he has heard about him from a mutual friend, in whose judgment he trusts, or from several persons, and so he has formed a very decided belief in regard to James. He has a creed about him, though he has never known him.

In the same way those who know God truly and well, by the experience of obedience and prayer, may have a very erroneous belief concerning him. Those who do not know him at all, by any personal experience, may have a very correct belief concerning him. But which saves the soul? Which governs the life? Which affects the heart? Evidently not the belief, but the knowledge.

We are not saved by any belief whatsoever concerning God or Christ, concerning sin or salvation, concerning duty or destiny. Belief brings us into contact with the images of things, not the things themselves. Belief has no saving power. But knowledge has. "This is life eternal, to KNOW thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent."

It is therefore a great mistake when Orthodoxy or Rationalism reverses the axiom of John, and instead of saying, "Life is the light of man," tells us that "Light is the life of man." Knowledge comes from life. Belief comes from knowledge, and not the contrary.

The PRINCIPLE of Orthodoxy, as stated at the commencement of this chapter (in § 1), is, that there is one true system of Christian doctrine, and that all others are false. The IDEA of Orthodoxy, as stated in § 10 of this chapter, is, that the soul is saved by the sight of truth. The idea of Orthodoxy is true-its principle is false. The sight of truththat is, of the great spiritual realities saves us, for only by that sight are we lifted above our feeble and imperfect selves, and enabled to partake of the nature of God. But while truth is ever one and the same, doctrine varies from age to age, varies from man to man. Each man's statement is