so the content of religion and morality is the same, though the spirit in which it is done is widely different.
But all this, we may be told, though true to a certain extent, is one-sided; there is religion beyond all this. And this objection must be attended to. We have never lost sight of the fact it rests upon, although we may have seemed to do so. That fact is what some would call religion proper, the creed, the public cultus, and the sphere of private devotion. These we must now consider, but no further than we are obliged, i.e. so far as the question is touched, Has religious duty another content than the moral content?
Put in this way, the question is on our view of morality absurd. If anything ought to be done, then it must be a moral duty; and the notion of religious duty, as such, outside of and capable of colliding with moral duty as such, is preposterous nonsense. If it is a religious duty to be ‘religious,’ then it is also a moral duty to be religious; precisely as, if it is a moral duty to be moral, it is also a religious duty to be moral.
A better way to put the question is, Does passing from the mere moral sphere into the religious introduce a new order of duties, to take in which morality has now to be extended? That, however, is again an improper question, since, if it is right to be thus ‘religious,’ we have no business previously to narrow morality, i.e. to exclude religiousness from the ideal which morality is to realize. It seems quite plain that the sphere of morality is the sphere of practice, and the sphere of practice is the sphere of morality. There is no escaping this conclusion; and then, so far as religion is practical, the worlds of morality and religion must coincide.
What is really at issue is this, Is religion altogether practical? Is, that is to say, the theoretical element of it co-ordinate with or subordinate to the practical element? Does religion, like art and science, include a theoretical sphere, which in respect of its production in and by the subject is practice, but, in itself and as produced, is not so? And next, if there is such a region, how does it stand to practice? Is it subsidiary to that, or is it an end in itself, when not brought under the practical end? And then further, how in respect of such a region is morality situated?
