he
doubter. "If I say, I will speak thus; behold I should offend against the
generation of thy children."

These remarks will enable us to estimate the manner and degree in which
the emotions may, consciously or unconsciously, influence the operations
of the intellect in reference to religion; and will clear the way for the
statement of that which is to form the special subject of study in these
lectures, the nature and mode of operation of the intellectual causes, and
the forms of free thought in religion to which they may give rise. This
branch is frequently neglected, because satisfying the intellect rather
than the heart, indicating tendencies rather than affording means to
pronounce judgment on individuals; yet it admits of greater certainty, and
will perhaps in some respects be found to be not less full of instruction,
than the other.

We must distinctly apprehend what is here intended by the term
"intellectual cause," when applied to a series of phenomena like sceptical
opinions. It does not merely denote the antecedent ideas which form
previous links in the same chain of thought: these are sufficiently
revealed by the chronicle which records the series. Nor does it mean the
uniformity of method according to which the mind is observed to act at
successive intervals: this is the law or formula, the existence of which
has been already indicated.(89) But we intend by "cause" two things;
either the sources of knowledge which have from age to age thrown their
materials into the stream of thought, and compelled reason to
re-investigate religion and try to harmonize the new knowledge with the
old beliefs; or else the ultimate intellectual grounds or tests of truth
on which the decision in such cases has been based, the most general types
of thought into which the forms of doubt can be analysed. The problem is
this:--Given, these two terms: on the one hand the series of opinions known
as the history of free thought in religion; on the other the uniformity of
mode in which reason has operated. Interpolate two steps to connect them
together, which will show respectively the materials of knowledge which
reason at successive moments brought to bear on religion, and the ultimate
standards of truth which it adopted in applying this material to it. It is
the attempt to supply the answer to this problem that will give organic
unity to these lectures.

A few words will suffice in reference to the former of these two subjects,