a mere
purveyor of motive to morality is not more dishonorable to the ethics
which must ask than to the religion which will render such
assistance.... The feeling Schleiermacher advocates, is not the
fanaticism of the ignorant or the visionary emotion of the idle. It is
not an aimless reverie shrinking morbidly from the light of clear and
definite thought. Feeling, in its sound condition, affects both our
conception and our will, leads to knowledge and to action. Neither
knowledge nor morality are in themselves the measure of a man's
religiousness. Yet religion is requisite to true wisdom and morality
inseparable from true religion. He points out the hurtfulness of a union
between church and state. With indignant eloquence he descants on the
evils which have befallen the church since first the hem of the priestly
robe swept the marble of the imperial palace."[53]

Religion being subjective, according to Schleiermacher, there can be
interminable varieties of it. As we look at the universe in numerous
lights, and thereby derive different impressions, so do we acquire a
diversity of conceptions of religion. Hence it has had many forms among
the nations of the earth. There is in each breast a religion derived
from the object of intellectual or spiritual vision. Christianity is the
great sum resulting from the antagonism of the finite and the infinite,
the human and divine. The fall and redemption, separation and reunion,
are the great elements from which we behold Christianity arise. Of all
kinds of religion this alone can claim universal adaptation and rightful
supremacy. Christ was the revelator of a system more advanced than
Polytheism or Judaism. Only by viewing his religion in the simple light
in which he places it can the mind find safety in its attempts to seek
for a basis of faith. But, important as Christianity is, it will avail
but little unless it become the heart-property of the theoretical
believer.

The _Discourses_ produced a deep impression. They inspired the class to
whom they had been directed with what it needed most of all, _a sense of
dependence_. One could not read them and close the volume without
wondering how reason could be deified and the feeling of the heart
ignored. There were multitudes of the educated and cultivated throughout
the land who, having become unfriendly to Christianity through the
persistence of the Rationalists, were equally indisposed to be satisfied
with a mere destructive the