hich is the lowest form of religion, and that highest
form in which perfect love casteth out fear, springs from the fuller
knowledge of the nature of the object of warship, which the latter
implies. Thus, religion and morality grow with the growth of knowledge;
and neither has a worse enemy than ignorance. The human spirit cannot
grow in a one-sided manner. Devotion to great moral ends is possible,
only through the deepening and widening of man's knowledge of the nature
of the world. Those who know God best, render unto Him the purest
service.

So evident is this, that it seems at first sight to be difficult to
account for that antagonism to the intellect and distrust of its
deliverances, which are so emphatically expressed in the writings of
Browning, and which are marked characteristics of the ordinary religious
opinion of our day. On closer examination, however, we shall discover
that it is not pure emotion, or mere feeling, whose authority is set
above that of reason, but rather the emotion which is the result of
knowledge. The appeal of the religious man from the doubts and
difficulties, which reason levels against "the faith," is really an
appeal to the character that lies behind the emotion. The conviction of
the heart, that refuses to yield to the arguments of the understanding,
is not _mere_ feeling; but, rather, the complex experience of the past
life, that manifests itself in feeling. When an individual, clinging to
his moral or religious faith, says, "I have felt it," he opposes to the
doubt, not his feeling as such, but his personality in all the wealth of
its experience. The appeal to the heart is the appeal to the unproved,
but not, therefore, unauthorized, testimony of the best men at their
best moments, when their vision of truth is clearest. No one pretends
that "the loud and empty voice of untrained passion and prejudice" has
any authority in matters of moral and religious faith; though, in such
cases, "feeling" may lack neither depth nor intensity. If the "feelings"
of the good man were dissociated from his character, and stripped bare
of all the significance they obtain therefrom, their worthlessness would
become apparent. The profound error of condemning knowledge in order to
honour feeling, is hidden only by the fact that the feeling is already
informed and inspired with knowledge. Religious agnosticism, like all
other forms of the theory of nescience, derives its plausibility from
the adventitiou