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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
The age-old device of using a text is an extremely useful one. A text summarises—or should summarise—what the preacher has to say; and, even if, as is often the case, the congregation forget the contents of the sermon almost straight away, there is just a chance that they will remember the text. As an eighteenth-century divine wisely observed in advising young clergymen, ‘Propose one point in one discourse, and stick to it; a hearer never carries away more than one impression.’The text and the one point of this paper is evident from the title: ‘The philosophy of religion, the banner of a sect.’
page 113 note 2 From an ordination sermon preached by Paley in 1781.
page 115 note 1 Austin Farrer, op. cit., London, 1943, p. vii.
page 115 note 2 The actual term ‘philosophy of religion’ is Hegelian, rather than Kantian, in origin. Kant speaks of ‘Religion within the Bounds of Pure Reason’. If Christian theologians had remembered this, they might have been less inclined to fall under his spell.
page 117 note 1 It is significant that the term ‘history of religions’ which is of German origin (Religionsgeschichte), is only rarely used in the English universities. There ‘comparative study of religions’, a less committed term, with which Anglican theologians feel easier, is more common. The occurrence of the history of religions in the theological curricula of the Scottish universities undoubtedly points to the close connexion between Scottish and German theology in the last century. Probably the study of the history of religions in the University of Wales owes its inception to Scottish rather than English influence.
page 118 note 1 One is bound to mention at some stage that Christians themselves were not blameless in this matter. The denominational bickering of the Victorian era gave added strength to the exclusion of theology proper from the universities in favour of the philosophy of religion.
page 118 note 2 The Listener, 10th February 1955.
page 120 note 1 Science in the Modern World, Cambridge 1926, p. 268.Google Scholar