The intellectual will therefore be the variable element in dogma. It is the matter united to the germ, and it is ceaselessly transformed by the very effect of the movement of life. The reason of this is simple. We said just now that a religious emotion, like every other, translates itself into a notion which fixes the relation of the subject to the object, implied in the emotion itself. But what will this notion be? With what materials, with what concepts, will the religious man construct it? Clearly with those at his disposal. His religious formula will depend on his state of intellectual culture. A child, he will think and speak religiously as a child. Religious reason and language have followed the same steps as the general reason.... I am well aware that many Christians imagine that God has revealed to us dogmas in the Bible, and that they will accuse me of denying revelation. God forbid! We believe with all our soul in Divine Revelation and in its particular action in the souls of prophets and apostles, and especially in Jesus Christ. Only, the question is whether the revelation of God has consisted of doctrines and dogmatic formulas. No. God does nothing needless, and since these doctrines and formulas can be and have been conceived by human intelligence, He has left to it the care of elaborating them. God, entering into commerce and contact with a human soul, has produced in him a certain religious experience whence, afterwards, by reflection, the dogma has sprung. That therefore which constitutes revelation, that which ought to be the norm of our life, is the creative and fruitful religious experience which first arose in the souls of the prophets, of Christ, and of His apostles. We may be tranquil. So long as this experience shall be renewed in Christian souls, Christian dogmas may be modified, but they will never die. But why should we retain dogmas which, in the nature of things, must always be imperfect? Why not have religion pure and simple without dogmas? What would happen if we listened to this cry for pure unmixed religion? By suppressing Christian dogma you would suppress Christianity; by discarding all religious doctrine you would destroy religion. How many great and eternal things there are which never exist, for us, in a pure and isolated state! All the forces of Nature are in this case. Thought, in order to exist, must incarnate itself in language. Words cannot be identified with thought, but they are necessary to it. The hero in the romance, who was said to be unable to think without speaking was not so ridiculous as was once supposed, for that hero is everybody. The soul only reveals itself to us by the body to which it is united. Who has ever seen life apart from living matter? It is the same with the religious life and the doctrines and rites in which it manifests itself. A religious life which did not express itself would neither know itself nor communicate itself.