Chapter III: The Office of the Reason

Thus far we have dealt with sources of religious insight which are indispensable, but which confess their own inadequacy so soon as you question them closely. Individual experience can show us, in its moments of wider vision, our ideal, and its times of despair, of aspiration, or of self-examination, our need. But whenever it attempts to acquaint us with the way of salvation, its deliveries are clouded by the mists of private caprice and of personal emotion. Social experience, in its religious aspects, helps the individual to win the wider outlook, helps him also to find his way out of the loneliness of guilt and of failure toward wholeness of life, and promises salvation through love. But, like individual experience, it is beset by what we have called the religious paradox. And it does not solve that paradox. Confessing its own defects, it still undertakes to discern how to overcome them. In so far as it is merely social experience it deals with the world of weak mortals, of futile bickerings, and of love that, in this world, deifies but never quite finds its true beloved. By virtue of this transforming love it indeed gives {80} us the hint that our social world may be an apparition or an incarnation of some diviner life than any mortal now experiences. Yet how can mortals thus ignorant pretend to get insight into anything that is divinely exalted?

Thus, both the sources of insight that we have thus far consulted point beyond themselves. Each says, "If salvation is possible, then human life must be able to come into touch with a life whose meaning is superhuman." Our question is: "Is there, indeed, such a diviner life?" In order to deal with this question, we have resolved to consult still another source of insight, namely, our Reason. The present lecture must deal with this source of insight.