abstract reasoning passes by, still,
such piety is nothing more than a poetry of thought or an ornament of
language, and has not even an infinitesimal influence upon philosophy or
science, of which it is rather the parasitical production.

I understand, in that case, why Theology should require no specific
teaching, for there is nothing to mistake about; why it is powerless
against scientific anticipations, for it merely is one of them; why it is
simply absurd in its denunciations of heresy, for heresy does not lie in
the region of fact and experiment. I understand, in that case, how it is
that the religious sense is but a "sentiment," and its exercise a
"gratifying treat," for it is like the sense of the beautiful or the
sublime. I understand how the contemplation of the universe "leads onwards
to _divine_ truth," for divine truth is not something separate from
Nature, but it is Nature with a divine glow upon it. I understand the zeal
expressed for Physical Theology, for this study is but a mode of looking
at Physical Nature, a certain view taken of Nature, private and personal,
which one man has, and another has not, which gifted minds strike out,
which others see to be admirable and ingenious, and which all would be the
better for adopting. It is but the theology of Nature, just as we talk of
the _philosophy_ or the _romance_ of history, or the _poetry_ of
childhood, or the picturesque, or the sentimental, or the humorous, or any
other abstract quality, which the genius or the caprice of the individual,
or the fashion of the day, or the consent of the world, recognizes in any
set of objects which are subjected to its contemplation.

8.

Such ideas of religion seem to me short of Monotheism; I do not impute
them to this or that individual who belongs to the school which gives them
currency; but what I read about the "gratification" of keeping pace in our
scientific researches with "the Architect of Nature;" about the said
gratification "giving a dignity and importance to the enjoyment of life,"
and teaching us that knowledge and our duties to society are the only
earthly objects worth our notice, all this, I own it, Gentlemen, frightens
me; nor is Dr. Maltby's address to the Deity sufficient to reassure me. I
do not see much difference between avowing that there is no God, and
implying that nothing definite can for certain be known about Him; and
when I find Religious Education treated as the cultivation of sen