But we must penetrate still deeper. Schleiermacher has directed our attention anew to the fact that the most profound element in religion is that deep-lying consciousness of all creatures, “I that am dust and ashes,” that humble feeling of the absolute dependence of every being in the world on One that is above all the world. But religion does not fully express itself even in this; there is yet another note that sounds still deeper and is the keynote of the triad. “Let a man examine himself.” Is it not the case that we ourselves, in as far as the delight in knowledge and the enthusiasm for solving riddles have taken hold of us, rejoice in every new piece of elucidation and interpretation that science succeeds in making, that we are in the fullest sympathy with the impulse to understand everything and bring reason and clearness into it, and that we give hearty adherence to the leading ideas which guide the investigations of natural science? Yet on the other hand, in as far as we are religious, do we not sometimes feel a sudden inward recoil from this almost profane eagerness to penetrate into the mystery of things, this desire to have everything intelligible, clear, rational and transparent? This feeling which stirs in us has always existed in all religious minds and will only die with them. And we need not hesitate to say so plainly. For this is the most real characteristic of religion; it seeks depth in things, reaches out towards what is concealed, uncomprehended, and mysterious. It is more than humility; it is piety. And piety is experience of mystery.
It is at this point that religion comes most violently into antagonism with the meaning and mood of naturalism. Here they first conflict in earnest. And it is here above all that scientific investigation and its materialistic complement seem to take away freedom and truth, air and light from religion. For science is seeking especially this: Deeper penetration into and illumination of the world. It presses with macroscope and microscope into its most outlying regions and most hidden corners, into its abysses and fastnesses. It explains away the old idea of two worlds, one on this side and one on that, and rejects heavenly things with the notice “No Room” of which D. Fr. Strauss speaks. It aims at discovering the mathematical world-formulæ, if not indeed one great general formula which embraces, defines unequivocally, and rationalises all the processes of and in infinity, from the movements of Sirius to those of the cilia of the infusorian in the drop of water, and which not only crowds “heaven” out of the world, but strips away from things the fringe of the mysterious and incommensurable which seemed to surround them.