Remarks on the Princeton Review [pp. 306-347]

342 Prof. Park's Remarks on the Princeton Review. [APRIL
connected is not to be treated lightly. It has been elaborated
with so much skill, sustained by so much power, and adopted
by so many leading minds, that it deserves the most serious
examination. It would be a very important service if some
competent hand would undertake such a scrutiny, and philosophically discuss the various points which the theory in question
involves, separating the warp of truth from the woof of error
in its complicated texture. No one can read even the bald outline of that theory as given above, without feeling its power,
and seeing that there is an element of truth in it which gives
it a dangerous plausibility. We must leave such an examination, however, to those whom God calls to the work. We have
an humbler office. There are two methods of dealing with a
false theory. The one is, the refutation of its principles; the
other is, to show that its admitted results are in conflict with
established truths. The latter is much the shorter, and generally, much the more satisfactory, as it is the common scriptural
method of dealing with error. We propose, therefore, simply to indicate one or two points in which the theory, one of
whose principles our author has adopted, stands in conflict with
the Bible.
In the first place, the radical principle of the theory, viz. that
religion consists essentially in feeling, is contrary to the scriptural doctrine on the subject, and is opposed to what the Bible
teaches of the importance of truth. According to Scripture,
religion is not a blind feeling, desire, or emotion, but it is a
form of knowledge. It is the spiritual discernment of divine
things. The knowledge, which in the Bible is declared to be
eternal, or spiritual life, is not the mere intellectual, or speculative apprehension of the truth; but such apprehension is one
of its essential elements, and therefore of true religion. No
man can have the spiritual discernment of any truth which he
does not know. The intellectual cognition is just as necessary
to spiritual knowledge as the visual perception of a beautiful
object is to the apprehension of its beauty. Men cannot be
made religious by mere instruction, but they cannot be religious
without it. Religion includes the knowledge, i. e. the intellectual apprehension of divine things, as one of its essential
elements, without which it cannot exist. And therefore it is