ABSTRACT

The Bible never commands us to believe, though it commends belief. Such a command would be useless. Belief cannot be coerced. Belief is a matter of mental persuasion. Real belief is an intellectual condition. Reason is its ultimate foundation. Unlike Christianity, Judaism does not set up the Bible or the Church as a despotic authority, whose ordinances it is a sin to reason about. Moreover, faith is the necessary equipment even of the scientific investigator, himself being witness. Religion postulates a Divine Mind as the explanation of the universe. But the demand which it thus makes upon our faith is no greater than that put forth by physical science, with its assumption of a substance filling all space, to which it has given the name of the Ether. The truth is, that even in the exercise of faith there is no real abdication of the reason.