exercises of a rigorous piety, or in the passionate outbursts of an enthusiastic fervor.
But these considerations would lead me on to a subject which I had once hoped to treat within the boundaries of the present volume, but which I am now compelled, owing to the enlargement of the scheme, to postpone to a future time. That subject is the relation of religion to ethics. It may have struck some readers as an omission that I have said nothing of religion as a force inspiring moral conduct, which is the principal aspect under which it is regarded by some competent authorities. But the omission has been altogether intentional. It would take me a long time to explain what in my judgment has been the actual influence of religion upon morals in the past, and what is likely to be its influence in the future. Meanwhile I merely note the fact that this analysis professes to be complete in its own kind; that I have endeavored to probe the religious sentiment to the bottom, and to discover all that it contains. Thus, if religion be not only an emotion, but a moral force, it must acquire this character in virtue of the relation of its emotional elements to human character, not in virtue of the presence of ethical elements actually belonging to the religious emotion, and comprehended under it by the same indefeasible title as the sense of the Unknowable itself.
At present, however, I can attempt no answer to the objection which will no doubt be urged, that so abstract and cold a faith as that expounded here can afford no satisfaction to the moral sentiments. Indeed I must to a certain extent admit the reality of the loss which the adoption of this faith entails. There is consolation no doubt in the thought of a Heavenly Father who loves us; there is strength in the idea that he sees and helps us in our continual combat against evil without and evil within; there is happiness in the hope that he will assign us in another life an infinite reward for all the endurances of this. Above all, there is comfort in the reflection that when we are parted by death we are not parted for ever; that our love for those whom we have cherished on earth is no temporary bond, to be broken ere long in bitterness and despair, but a possession never to be lost again, a union of souls interrupted for a little while by the separation of the body, only to be again
