n whom we live and move and have our
being, and his emotion towards this power. Theology is man's conception of
this Power, and his thought defined and formulated.

Religion is man's feeling after God; theology is man's grasp of God. The
two are necessarily connected. They are different forms of one and the
same force; the heat and the light which stream from God; but the heat and
the light are not always equal. A worthy thought of God ought to sustain
any worthy feeling towards Him. It generally does so. A heightened thought
of God may often be found back of a rising flow of feeling after Him. More
often the emotion precedes the conception; the vague, awed sense of God
travails till a new thought is born among men. This has been the order of
development in history. Men felt the Divine Power and Presence ages before
they had learned so much of theology as to say--God. The feeling of
God--religion--always keeps, in healthy natures, far ahead of
theology--the thought about Him. The deepest religion finds no word for
the mystery before which it bows. Its only thought may be that no thought
is sufficient.

"In that high hour thought was not."

Theology, then, as man's thought about God, is necessarily conditioned by
man's mind. It is under the general limitations of the human intellect,
and the special limitations of thought in each race and age and
individuality. It cannot escape these limitations, expand as they may. A
flooding of the mind from on high may overflow these embankments but they
still stand, shaping the flow of the fullest tides. The individuality of a
great writer asserts itself most strongly in his greatest works. His
deepest inspiration brings out most plainly his mental form, just as the
drawing of a full breath shows the real shape of a man. No possible theory
of inspiration should lead us to look for the submergences of the dykes of
thought cast up by race and age and individuality.

As a matter of fact, we find no uniformity in the theologies of the New
Testament writers. Men have tried hard to make it appear that there was
such a unity of thought. Never was more ingenious joiner-work done than in
the "harmonies" of the New Testament writers. But facts are stubborn
things, and in this case have resisted even the omnipotence of human
ingenuity; as open minds have seen, despite the doctors.

St. Paul's Epistles reveal a theology by no means as precise and fixed as
is popularly imagined, undergoing