Having affirmed the influence of the heart upon the intellect and scholarship, let us hasten to confess that the heart determines the religious belief and creed.  It is often said that belief is a matter of pure reason determined wholly by evidence.  And doubtless it is true that in approaching mathematical proofs man is to discharge his mind of all color.  That two and two are four is true for the poet and the miser, for the peaceable man not less than the litigious.  But of the other truths of life it is a fact that with the heart man believes.  We approach wheat with scales, we measure silk with a yardstick; we test the painting with taste and imagination, and the symphony with the sense of melody; motives and actions are tested by conscience; we approach the stars with a telescope, while purity of heart is the glass by which we see God.  The scales that are useful in the laboratory are utterly valueless in the art gallery.  The scientific faculty that fits Spencer for studying nature unfits him for studying art.  In his old age Huxley, the scientist, wrote an essay forty pages long to prove that man was more beautiful than woman.  Imagine some Tyndall approaching the transfiguration of Raphael to scrape off the colors and test them with acid and alkali for finding out the proportion of blue and crimson and gold.  These are the methods that would give the village paint-grinder precedency above genius itself.

In 1837 two boys entered Faneuil hall and heard Wendell Phillips’ defense of Lovejoy.  One youth was an English visitor who saw the portraits of Otis and Hancock, yet saw them not; heard the words of Phillips, yet heard them not, and because his heart was in London believed not unto patriotism.  But the blood of Adams was in the veins of the other youth.  He thought of Samuel Adams, who heard the firing at Lexington and exclaimed; “What a glorious morning this is!” He thought of John Adams and his love of liberty.  He thought of the old man eloquent, John Quincy Adams, in the Halls of Congress, and as he listened to the burning words of the speaker, tears filled his eyes and pride filled his soul.  It was his native land.  With his heart he believed unto patriotism.

What the man is determines largely what his intellect thinks about God.  When the heart is narrow, harsh, and rigorous its theology is despotic and cruel.  When the heart grows kindly, sympathetic and of autumnal richness, it emphasizes the sympathy and love of God.  Each man paints his own picture of God.  The heart lends the pigments.  Souls full of sweetness and light fill the divine portrait with the lineaments of love.  For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness.