FOOTNOTES.
Reading edition
“If there be a God, then man bears relations to Him, and his duties to God are of a private nature, and therefore not of interest to the State, and in no way coming under the jurisdiction of Science. And what the duties are which man owes to God can only be ascertained by a Revelation, for they cannot be discovered experimentally.”
There are two propositions here essentially anti-Socratic, and, in my opinion, essentially false:—(1.) That religion belongs to man only as a private individual, and not as a citizen. This is a favourite idea of the most recent times, and has its only root in the fact that on account of the growth of a certain stout and stubborn individualism in Christian Churches it has been found practically impossible to make Christian men combine socially for the performance of any religious function. This difficulty, however, belongs not to the nature of religion, but to the imperfection of moral culture in our existing ethical associations called Churches. The social recognition of the Supreme Father still remains as much an ideal in modern times as it was a real in ancient times. The ancients sacrificed in this matter the individual to the State; we, for the glorification of the individual, allow the State to sit shorn of one of its greatest glories. Whatsoever a man is bound to do as a moral being individually, he is bound to do socially, if it be possible. The so-called Voluntary system is a mere shift to save the trouble and shirk the difficulty which narrow-minded Christians feel in working together to give a national expression to common religious feelings and common religious convictions.
(2.) The second proposition here is, that religious duties can only be ascertained by Revelation, and come in no way under the jurisdiction of Science. To this Socrates answers that religious duties are three, reverence, gratitude, and obedience, and that the first two of these have their root in the commonest instincts and most rudimentary notions of reasonable beings, while the third, depending, as it does, partly on general science, partly on special intellectual culture, falls directly under the jurisdiction of Science. For to obey the laws of God we must know them, and we know them, as we know other things, by observation and reflection; for they are not hidden, as some men count hidden, but written everywhere, both within us and without, in the most legible scripture, and pressed upon us daily by the most cogent arguments; and no man can escape from their obligation. If by duties to God Mr. Gould understands only special religious observances as expressive of our religious sentiments and convictions, then no doubt it is quite true that these special forms of expression must either be revealed directly from Heaven, or vary considerably, according to the character and condition of the people who use them; but such a narrowing of the idea of religious duty, confining it to the accidental instead of the essential, depriving it in fact of its soul and vital principle, is most unphilosophical; and I am more willing to suppose that such a thoughtful writer as Mr. Gould should have been led astray by a fashionable phase of modern thought, than that he should be deliberately guilty of the impertinence of giving his readers the shell of a thing as its definition, when they had a right to look for the kernel.
Βίας ἐρωτηθεὶς τὶ ἂν εἴη τῶν κατὰ τὸν βίον ἀφόβων εἶπεν ἀγαθὴ συνείδησις. Περίανδρος ἐρωτηθεὶς τὶ ἔστιν ἐλευθερία εἶπεν ἀγαθὴ ουνείδησις. Stobæus, Sermon, cvi.
[End of Footnotes]