[Footnote 43: L'Idée de Dieu et ses Nouveaux Critiques. By E. Caro. p. 498. 8vo. Paris, 1864.]
It is to be regretted M. Caro has not carried his conclusions still higher, and completed his work by proceeding on from philosophical spiritualism to Christian Spiritualism.
Rationalistic Deism is merely an idea of God, given as the philosophical solution of the grand problem, which the spectacle of the Universe and of Man in the Universe causes to weigh upon the soul of man.
Christianity is faith in God, Being real, Sovereign real, continually present, and active in the government of the Universe, as he is in the soul of man and in the history of the human race.
Rationalistic Deism arrives at the idea of God, and stops short there, because it ignores the psychological and historical facts which go beyond this idea. It is by holding account of these facts, and by doing to them the homage which is their due, that Christianity forwards and justifies her faith.
Sixth Meditation.
Christian Life.
Every doctrine, religious, moral, or political, has yet to submit to a test—the great test—the practical application. The idea has to be transformed into reality, the thought to be made life.
Philosophers pride themselves upon searching only for the truth, upon busying themselves only with the theoretical truth of their ideas, to the neglect of every other consideration. They are right in one sense: for the knowledge of truth, of truth as it is in itself, is that which the human mind proposes to itself as its object, and is the only thing which can satisfy it; if man pretends to it, it is his right and his honour to do so: whatever the object of his study, the mind does not halt or rest until it believes that it has attained to the truth.