FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY.
[To THE EDITOR Or THE "SPECTATOR."] Sin,—Is not " Gamaliel" (in your issue of August 10th) making, to some extent, the very mistake made also by many ecclesiastically minded people in comparing religion to the propositions of Euclid ? I agree, in part, that it is" perverse to make religion dependent on certain alleged historical occur- rences," if by that be meant that in the last resort we must do the right because it is right. Ruskin urges this in "Sesame and Lilies." Matthew Arnold points out that the Mohammedan revivalist, in the prologue to the Persian passion play, insists that good works must be done in the name and for the sake of Hassan and Hussein. There has been too much of this type of teaching in a very crude form in the Christian Church. But surely, if religion means, as it ought to do, a sore combat with our own wills, then, quite apart from the consideration of special means of grace, theistic belief, and, still more, Christian theistic belief, is a great help to right conduct. Right is right, just as the three angles of any triangle are equal to two right angles. But when it comes to doing what is right I find myself enormously assisted by the consideration of acts done for me by father and mother and wife and friends; and it is here that the Gospel narrative comes in. There is a great deal in what " Gamaliel" urges, but there is also a great deal in the revivalist view; both are true if each is corrected and kept in bounds by the other.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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