Is there any truth which can be affirmed to belong universally to this consciousness? If there be, it will hold good universally of religion, and the recognition of it will advance us a step in the knowledge of the nature of religion. One such truth at least, it appears to me, there is--viz., that the religious consciousness, or the frame and condition of spiritual life distinctive and essential in religion, is not peculiar to some one province of human nature, but extends into all its provinces. This truth has been often contradicted in appearance, seldom in reality. The seat of religion, as I indicated in last lecture, has been placed by some in the intellect, by others in the affections, and by others still in the will. It has been represented as knowing, or feeling, or doing. When we examine, however, the multitude of, at first glance, apparently very conflicting views which have originated in thus fixing upon some single mental faculty as the religious faculty, the organ and seat of religion, we soon find that they are not so discordant and antagonistic as they seem to be. Those who represent religion as essentially knowledge or belief, do not really mean to affirm that anything entitled to be called religion is ever mere knowledge or mere belief; on the contrary, they proceed on the supposition that feeling and volition will correspond to the knowledge or belief. They define religion as knowledge or belief, and not as affection or volition, because, regarding religious knowledge or belief as the ground of religious feeling and willing, they think they may treat the two latter, not as constituents, but as consequences of religion. Then, although a few of those who have defined religion as feeling have written as if they supposed that the feeling rested upon no sort of apprehension or conviction, they have been very few, and they have never been able to explain what they meant. In presence of the Power which is manifested in the universe, or of the moral order of the world, they have felt an awe or joy, it may be, irresistibly raising them above themselves, above the hampering details of earth, and "giving fulness and tone to their existence;" and being unaccustomed to analyse states of consciousness, although familiar with the mechanics and chemistry of matter, they have overlooked the obvious fact, that but for an intellectual perception of the presence of an all-pervading Power, and all-embracing order, the awe and joy could never have been excited. Mere feeling cannot tell us anything about what is out of ourselves, and cannot take us out of ourselves. Mere feeling is, in fact, mere absurdity. It is but what we should expect, therefore, that all those capable of reflecting in any measure on mental processes who have placed the essence of religion in feeling, have always admitted that the religious feeling could not be wholly separated either from the power of cognition on the one hand, or the exertion of will on the other.