The Unitarian Review Volume 5 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1876 edition. Excerpt: ...of our senses be called in question, we are sure that we exist who exercise them. Our existence is surest of all, and rests upon no inference, notwithstanding the famous ergo of Descartes. And as sure as is our consciousness of ourselves living, is our assurance of the Life in us and not of us. That is, however undeceptive are those phenomena and relations of truth which can be definitely conceived and expressed, the unformulated and inexpressible testimonies of Being itself have a still deeper foundation and assurance. We say this to indicate at the outset the character of the assurance we shall claim for religion. Of course we do not claim that this inexpressible testimony simply of Being as the foundation of our existence is a religious truth. Religious truth is spiritual truth, --has a qualitative value; and if the inner testimony were simply of Being, if it had, as Spencer says, " no quantitative or qualitative value whatever," we should not claim it as a religious testimony. What we shall endeavor to set forth in the course of our argument is, that Being does reveal itself in us by a testimony that has a qualitative value; it reveals itself as a Spirit, not furnishing a conception of the intellect, but an impulse towards action. This radical distinction between spiritual and intellectual truth, denied both by Mr. Bixby and Dr. Hill, needs to be recognized as it has not yet been in this whole discussion between science and religion. Spiritual emotions and intellectual abstractions are of an entirely different character. But, it may be said, spiritual emotions bear testimony to spiritual beings, or realities, and thus furnish objects of intellectual perception. We reply that spiritual emotions testify to spiritual emotions, and...