RELIGION has been variously defined ac cording to a multitude of epistemological and ethical systems. The pantheist Hegel takes it to be the knowledge acquired by the finite spirit of its essence as Absolute Spirit.' Kant makes duty to follow his categoric imperative of the , practical reason; and religion to be 'the recognition of all our . duties as divine commands,* Huxley defines religion as 'rev erence and love for the ethical ideal, and the desire to realise that ideal in life.' According to Max Muller, religion is 'the perception of the infinite.' Schleiermacher says, it is 'a de termination of man's feeling of absolute de pendence." Matthew Arnold, the apostle of sweetness and light, finds that religion is 'morality touched by emotion.' The latest definition is that of Remelt, 'Orpheus) (1909): 'Religion is a collection of scruples that are a stumbling-block to the free exercise of our faculties.' Waiving these definitions, based upon false philosophical systems, one may begin by con ceiving a mans religion as his Godwardness. Cicero,
Natura Deorum,) II, xxviii, derives religio from re-legere, to re-collect, to recall to mind, to reflect. Lactantius,
I. Revealed Religion.-- They who believe in God's revelation of Himself to the human race as the basis of religion do not deny that man's acknowledgment of dependence upon God is postulated by the very nature of the universe; to this form of natural religion they superadd the obligation of worship consequent upon rev elation. 'What is known of God is clear' even to the heathen. For, 'ever since the
creation of the world, the unseen truths about God,everlasting power and divinity, are to be reasoned out and seen by His. works' (Romans i, 19-20). And yet 'God, who of old, at many times and in many places, spoke to our ancestors by the prophets, hath in these latter days spoken to us by a on (Hebrews 1:1-2). This communication of truth by God to the human race through the prophets and the is the basic fact of revealed religion.
1. Possibility of Revelation.— Subjective idealists and Kantians deny the possibility of revelation; for, in their systems of philosophy, knowledge has no objective validity, and there can be no certainty that God speaks to man The adherents to revealed religion believe in a Personal Deity, Creator of man. Since this Creator has bestowed upon man the faculty of communicating his ideas with fellow-men, He undoubtedly may in like manner communicate with us. The deist errs in assigning to God such transcendence as to preclude the possibil ity of revelation. For the infinity of God in cludes omnipresence; and His omnipotence demands that He may communicate with His creature wherever He is. Such communica tion is not opposed to the divine wisdom. For the authority of God revealing gives to man greater certainty of religious and moral truth Than does the authority of reason unaided by revelation. Moreover, fallen human nature, tainted by original sin, has tendencies to evil that are 'consequent upon concupiscence: God, in His wisdom, meets this fallen condition by the manifold graces of revealed religion. Not has human reason any such 'Kantian autonomy as to preclude the of God's revela tion to man. For the soul that reasons is cseated by God. But God is a Person, and every person acts with a purpose. Therefore, God; created the reasoning soul with a purpose. Bat in this divine purpose, God may intend a supernatural end, and may reveal this end to man; and Man% reason has no right to reject the revelation. Hence neither the wisdom of God the Kantiau autonomy of reason pre eludes the possibility of supernatural lion to the human race.