I am expounding the doctrine of the great Paul of Tarsus, who indeed applies it to this very topic,—­the future bliss which God has prepared for them that love him.  Does Mr. Rogers attack Paul as making a fanatical divorce between faith and intellect, and say that he is compelled so to understand him, when he avows that “the natural man understandeth not the things of God; for they are foolishness unto him.”  “When the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.”  Here is a pretended champion of Evangelical truth seeking to explode as absurdities the sentiments and judgments which have ever been at the heart of Christianity, its pride and its glory!

But I justify my argument as free from fanaticism—­and free from obscurity when the whole sentence is read—­to a Jew or Mohammedan, quite as much as to a Christian.

My opponent innocently asks, how much I desire him to quote of me?  But is innocence the right word, when he has quoted but two lines and a half, out of a sentence of seven and a half, and has not even given the clause complete?  By omitting, in his usual way, the connecting particle whereas, he hides from the reader that he has given but half my thought; and this is done, after my complaint of this very proceeding.  A reader who sees the whole sentence, discerns at once that I oppose “the mere understanding,” to the whole soul; in short, that by the man who has mere understanding, I mean him whom Paul calls “the natural man.”  Such a man may have metaphysical talents and acquirements, he may be a physiologist or a great lawyer; nay, I will add, (to shock my opponent’s tender nerves), even if he be an Atheist, he may be highly amiable and deserving of respect and love; but if he has no spiritual development, he cannot have insight into spiritual truth.  Hence such arguments for immortality as can be appreciated by him, and cannot be appreciated by religious men as such, “have nothing to do with faith at all”

The two other passages are found thus, in p. 245 of the “Soul,” 2nd edition.  After naming local history, criticism of texts, history of philosophy, logic, physiology, demonology, and other important but very difficult studies, I ask:—­

“Is it not extravagant to call inquiries of this sort spiritual or to expect any spiritual[11] results from them?  When the spiritual man (as such) cannot judge, the question is removed into a totally different court from that of the soul, the court of the critical understanding....  How then can the state of the soul be tested by the conclusion to which the intellect is led?  What means the anathematizing of those who remain unconvinced?  And how can it be imagined that the Lord of the soul cares more about a historical than about a geological, metaphysical, or mathematical argument?  The processes of thought have nothing to quicken the conscience or affect the soul.”