most
forcible, irrefragable, and indisputable truths to the inquirer.--It
must be that on which the human mind can err the least, and where all
minds must be the most agreed. If religion be at once a science, and the
most true of all sciences, its truths must be as indisputable as those
in any branch of the mathematics--as apparent to all the senses as those
revealed by the chemist or observed by the naturalist, and as easily
referred to the test of our approving or disapproving sensations, as
those involved in the science of morals.... Is religion a science?
Is it a branch of knowledge? Where are the _things known_ upon which it
rests? Where are the accumulated facts of which it is compounded? What
are the human sensations to which it appeals? Knowledge is compounded
of _things known_. It is an accumulation of facts gleaned by our senses,
within the range of material existence, which is subject to their
investigation.... Now let us see where, in the table of knowledge,
we may class religion. Of what part or division of nature, or material
existence, does it treat? What bodies, or what properties of tangible
bodies, does it place in contact with our senses, and bring home to the
perception of our faculties? It clearly appertains not to the table of
human knowledge, for it treats not of objects discoverable within the
field of human observation. 'No,' will you say? 'but its knowledge
is superhuman, unearthly--its field is in heaven.' My friends, the
knowledge which is not human, is of slippery foundation to us human
creatures. Things _known_, constitute knowledge; and here is a science
treating of things unseen, unfelt, uncomprehended! Such cannot be
_knowledge_. What, then, is it? Probability? possibility? theory?
hypothesis? tradition? written? spoken? by whom? when? where? Let its
teachers--nay, let all earth reply! But what confusion of tongues and
voices now strike on the ear! From either Indies, from torrid Africa,
from the frozen regions of either pole, from the vast plains of ancient
Asia, from the fields and cities of European industry, from the palaces
of European luxury, from the soft chambers of priestly ease, from the
domes of hierarchal dominion, from the deep cell of the self-immolated
monk, from the stony cave of the self-denying anchorite, from the
cloud-capt towers, spires, and minarets of the crescent and the cross,
arise shouts, and hosannas, and anathemas, in the commingled names
of Brama, and Veeshnu