ong other things it has given a definite character
to worship in all Christian countries. If dogmatic theology really
does prove beyond dispute that a God with characters like these exists,
she may well claim to give a solid basis to religious sentiment. But
verily, how stands it with her arguments?

It stands with them as ill as with the arguments for his existence.
Not only do post-Kantian idealists reject them root and branch, but it
is a plain historic fact that they never have converted any one who has
found in the moral complexion of the world, as he experienced it,
reasons for doubting that a good God can have framed it. To prove
God's goodness by the scholastic argument that there is no non-being in
his essence would sound to such a witness simply silly.

No! the book of Job went over this whole matter once for all and
definitively. Ratiocination is a relatively superficial and unreal
path to the deity: "I will lay mine hand upon my mouth; I have heard
of Thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth Thee." An
intellect perplexed and baffled, yet a trustful sense of presence--such
is the situation of the man who is sincere with himself and with the
facts, but who remains religious still.[298]

[298] Pragmatically, the most important attribute of God is his
punitive justice. But who, in the present state of theological opinion
on that point, will dare maintain that hell fire or its equivalent in
some shape is rendered certain by pure logic? Theology herself has
largely based this doctrine upon revelation, and, in discussing it, has
tended more and more to substitute conventional ideas of criminal law
for a priori principles of reason. But the very notion that this
glorious universe, with planets and winds, and laughing sky and ocean,
should have been conceived and had its beams and rafters laid in
technicalities of criminality, is incredible to our modern imagination.
It weakens a religion to hear it argued upon such a basis.

We must therefore, I think, bid a definitive good-by to dogmatic
theology. In all sincerity our faith must do without that warrant.
Modern idealism, I repeat, has said goodby to this theology forever.
Can modern idealism give faith a better warrant, or must she still rely
on her poor self for witness?

The basis of modern idealism is Kant's doctrine of the Transcendental
Ego of Apperception. By this formidable term Kant merely meant the
fact that the consciousne