Thoughts on Religion by George John Romanes
page 109 of 159 (68%)
page 109 of 159 (68%)
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all people can see further, or define the _differentiae_. These are as
follows: First, supposing Christianity true, there is the spiritual verification. Second, supposing Christianity false, there is still the moral ingredient, which _ex hypothesi_ is absent in superstition. In other words, both faith and superstition rest on an intellectual basis (which may be pure credulity); but faith rests also on a moral, even if not likewise on a spiritual. Even in human relations there is a wide difference between 'belief' in a scientific theory and 'faith' in a personal character. And the difference is in the latter comprising a moral element. 'Faith-healing,' therefore, has no real point of resemblance with 'thy faith hath saved thee' of the New Testament, unless we sink the personal differences between a modern faith-healer and Jesus Christ as objects of faith. Belief is not exclusively founded on objective evidence appealing to reason (opinion), but mainly on subjective evidence appealing to some altogether different faculty (faith). Now, whether Christians are right or wrong in what they believe, I hold it as certain as anything can be that the distinction which I have just drawn, and which they all implicitly draw for themselves, is logically valid. For no one is entitled to deny the possibility of what may be termed an organ of spiritual discernment. In fact to do so would be to vacate the position of pure agnosticism _in toto_--and this even if there were no objective, or strictly scientific, evidences in favour of such an organ, such as we have in the lives of the saints, and, in a lower degree, in the universality of the religious sentiment. Now, if there be such an organ, it follows from preceding paragraphs, that not only will the main evidences for Christianity be subjective, but that they ought to be so: |
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