Reason and Redemption [pp. 409-437]

412 REASON AND REDEMPTION. [July7
lusion; but, on the contrary, if it can be shown that the ground
assumed by the self-styled rationalist is untenable, then the
triumph of Redemption is complete and final.
We are willing to go a step further in the way of concession.
Not only are we ready to occupy, with the self-styled rationalist, the common ground of natural and human reason, as distinguished from supernatural and divine inspiration, we consent, also, to occupy with him the common ground of human
reason, as distinguished, on the one hand, from any merely inward light, supposed or not supposed to be from God, whether
of mere sensibility or of mistaken intuition, and, on the other
hand, from any mere human tradition. Nay, we not only consent to this, we insist upon it. Let us not attempt to stand
upon the treacherous foothold of mere prescription, no matter
how time-honored, or upon the edge of whimsical conceit or
individual* emotion or ecstatic sentiment; but let us plant ourselves side by side on the solid basis of good sense and sound
judgment and reasoning.
There is yet another concession which we are tempted to
make to the rationalist. We do not care to draw a hard and
fast line between reason and faith, or, with Kant and his disciples, between the pure and the practical reason, or between
knowledge and belief. On the contrary, we hold, with Jacobi,
that these peremptory distinctions often betray an imperfect
analysis. We stand ready to defend faith in the forum of reason.
Having thus cleared the ground, it is now our purpose to
take up the different rationalistic systems for a somewhat more
special examination. Of course, we do not intend anything beyond an outline sketch in chalk or crayons. These systems may
be at once set down as no more than five; Deism, Pantheismr
Positivism, Atheism, and Pyrrhonism; and it will be our object in what remains to make good the assertion, that, in so far
as these five systems oppose any arguments to Christianity,
they may, by further analysis, be reduced in number to but one,
and that one a system which denies the possibility of system, and
a form of rationalism in which reason commitsfclo dc Sc.
*For the individualism that inheres in the very notion of a medi~val mystic-see
Livin~ %~, No. 1589, p. 473. Per contra, it should be noted that, in one accepta.
tion of the term mystic, every pantheist is a mystic, although in pantheism individ.
uality is merged in total~ty.