Many years before he had said[22]
The conception of a Deity absorbed in perfect, unchanging and eternal bliss is a blasphemy upon the Divine energy which might be permitted to the heathen ignorance of Aristotle, but which should be abhorred by all who have learnt the lesson of the Crucifixion. A theology which denies that the imperfection of the world must be reflected in the sorrows of the Deity simply shows itself blind to the deepest and truest meaning of the figure of Him that was "a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief" and deaf to the gospel of Divine sympathy with the world. Thus the world-process is the process of the redemption alike of God, of the world and of our own selves.
The conception of a struggling and self-developing God which Schiller adduced from Christian principles is remarkably like that to which Bergson was led by other lines of reasoning.[23]
The value of the pragmatic method to religion is discussed by Schiller in his article on "Faith, Reason and Religion",[24] where he shows that even the most rigorous scientific reasoning involves the element of faith, and on the other hand that faith is devoid of value unless it is verified in the only way by which anything can be verified, that is, by works. He says:
Christianity is an essentially human and thoroughly pragmatic religion, hampered throughout its history and at times almost strangled by an alien theology, based upon the intellectualistic speculations of Greek philosophers. Fortunately the Greek metaphysic embodied (mainly) in the "Athanasian" creed is too obscure to have ever been really functional; its chief mischief has always been to give theological support to "philosophic" criticisms, which by identifying God with "the One" have aimed at eliminating the human elements from the Christian religion. As against all such attempts, however, we must hold fast to the principle that the truest religion is that which issues in and fosters the best life.
The pragmatic criterion of truth, that all truths must work, is not a lax one as its opponents assert but the most stringent that can be applied. It means—"You shall back your beliefs with your acts and shall not assert the truth of whatever suits you without any testing at all." It eliminates as meaningless all theories that make no difference whether they are believed or disbelieved. It demands constant confirmation of all beliefs by their consequences. It insists upon the unity of theory and practice, of faith and works. This point was plainly put by Schiller in his address before the Pan-Anglican Church Congress of 1908:
For any theory to work, it must be believed in, e.g., believed to be true. It is impossible, e.g., to practice prayer merely as a piece of spiritual hygiene, and in order to get the strengthening which is said to result from the practice. The practice need not, of course, start with a firm belief in the reality of its object. But unless it engenders a real belief, it will become inefficacious. Hence, to conceive of Pragmatism as ultimately sanctioning an "act-as-if" attitude of religious make-believe is a misapprehension; it is to confound it with the discredited and ineffectual dualism of Kant's antithesis of practical and theoretic "reason." Lastly, it should be noted that any theory which works must evoke some response from the objective nature of things. If there were no "God", i.e., nothing that could afford any satisfaction to any religious emotion, the whole religious attitude would be futile. If it is not, it must contain essential truth, though it may remain to be determined what is the objective fact corresponding to the postulate.
HOW TO READ SCHILLER
"Humanism" (1903, new edition 1912) and "Studies in Humanism" (1907, new edition 1912) are both collections of papers presenting various phases of Schiller's philosophy. Either one may serve as an introduction to the author. "Riddles of the Sphinx" (1891), though also revised (1910), represents an earlier mode of thought. "Formal Logic" (1912) is too technical for any but well prepared students. All Schiller's works are published by The Macmillan Company.