Note 30 — LETTER VI.

How may this be effected? Only when a man brings himself to acknowledge that religion is entirely and solely an affair of the heart and feelings; to which the head can be profitable only by standing as watchman of the sanctuary, and guarding it with the sword of reason from its two hereditary foes, superstition and intolerance. If he cannot be satisfied with this, if he will insist upon understanding what our nature forbids us to understand, he must fall into one of two difficulties; either he must take refuge in a so-called positive religion, or in a system of speculative philosophy. Both are unsatisfactory, as soon as he seeks to find more in them than an interesting sport of the fancy or of the intellect. While the profound innate sentiment of God, of Love, and of the Good, in every healthy state of the mind, stands with a steady irrefragable security, as clear to the lowest capacity, as to the highest, not merely as a belief, but as the true essence of his being,—his proper individual self. And this, without either reason or understanding being brought into immediate activity;—though both, when reflection is called in, must entirely confirm the sentiment.—Editor.