When man approaches the study and examination of the universe from the outside, he brings into being the various physical sciences; when he approaches the research of himself and the universe from the inside, he gives origin to theology and metaphysics. The later art of philosophy was developed in an effort to harmonize the many discrepancies which inevitably appeared between the findings and teachings of these two diametrically opposite avenues of approach to the universe of things and beings.

   Religion has to do with the spiritual viewpoint, the awareness of the inside-ness of human experience. Man's spiritual nature affords him the opportunity of turning the universe outside in. It is therefore true that, viewed exclusively from the inside-ness of personality experience, all creation appears to be spiritual in nature.

   However, when man analytically inspects the universe through the material endowments of his physical senses and the associated mind perception, the cosmos appears to be mechanical. Such a technique of studying reality consists in turning the universe inside out.

   A logical and consistent philosophic concept of the universe cannot be built up on the postulations of either materialism or spiritualism, for both of these systems of thinking, when universally applied, are compelled to view the cosmos in distortion. Never, then, can either science or religion, in and of themselves, standing alone, hope to gain an adequate understanding of universal truths and relationships without the guidance of human philosophy and the illumination of divine revelation.

   Always must man's inner spirit depend for its expression and self-realization upon the mechanism and technique of the mind. Likewise must man's outer experience of material reality be predicated on the mind consciousness of the experiencing personality. Therefore are the spiritual and the material, the inner and the outer, human experiences always correlated with the mind function and conditioned, as to their conscious realization, by the mind activity. Man experiences matter in his mind; he experiences spiritual reality in the soul but becomes conscious of this experience in his mind. The intellect is the harmonizer and the ever-present conditioner and qualifier of the sum total of mortal experience. Both energy-things and spirit values are colored by their interpretation through the mind media of consciousness.

     Science is man's attempted study of his physical environment, the world of energy-matter; religion is man's experience with the cosmos of spiritual values; philosophy has been developed by man's mind in an effort to organize and correlate the findings of these widely separated concepts into something like a reasonable and unified attitude toward the cosmos--and when clarified by revelation, philosophy does function acceptably in the presence of the breakdown and failure of man's reason substitute--metaphysics.

     Science must always be grounded in reason, although imagination and conjecture are helpful in the extension of its borders. Religion is forever dependent on faith, albeit reason is a stabilizing influence and a helpful handmaiden. However, always there have been, and ever will be, misleading interpretations of the phenomena of both the natural and the spiritual worlds, sciences and religions.

   Out of an incomplete grasp of science, his faint hold upon religion, and abortive attempts at metaphysics, man has attempted to construct his formulations of philosophy. And modern man would indeed build a worthy and engaging philosophy of himself, and his universe, were it not for the breakdown of an all-important and indispensable metaphysical connection between the world of matter and the domains of spirit, the failure of metaphysics to bridge the gulf between the physical and the spiritual.
    Unaided, faith and reason cannot conceive nor construct a logical universe. And without insight into the spiritual domain mortal man cannot discern love, truth, beauty, and goodness in the phenomena of the material world. Revelation is evolutionary man's only realistic hope of bridging the gulf between the material and the spiritual domain. But revelation is always personal. Therefore must man always live, by faith, midst uncertainty. And this truth is the inevitable accompaniment of God's most precious gift of free will to all mankind. (1135-1137)