The science and art of religion

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Preface

This work is the result of two distinct plans. Having often reflected on the difficulty which a Chinese or Hindoo scientific student must experience in any attempt to gain rational information regarding Christianity from European merchants, or even from the scholars he meets at English universities, I determined to write a brief treatise in explanation of the meaning of the Christian religion as professed by ordinary students. It may be thought that such a work would be best written by a minister of religion, or by some one with special theological education, but ignorance of technical theological language seems to me a great advantage, since the Chinese student cares nothing for the language or the opinions of millions of Europeans who are dead, but wants to know the arguments by which a modern believer in Christianity attempts to reconcile his reason with his religion. The European student of physical science is very apt to imagine that he is able to criticize religion when he has read the work of some man ignorant of all religion, or when he has learned to

Vin , PREFACE.

repeat a number of unmeaning phrases about the esoteric value of evolutional imagination, and he often assumes that any one who professes to believe in Christianity must either be deficient in reasoning power or be so criminally weak-minded as to surrender his reason at the bidding of a priest ; and hence I have occasionally written in the style which I have found it necessary to adopt in defence of my own opinions and of my claim to be a rational student.

On the other hand, when studying the possibility of curing and preventing all disease, it was evident to me, as it must be to every one, that physical suffering is very often the result of moral evil, so that the education of a physician is imperfect until he has studied the treatment and prevention of moral evil. As there is no scientific text-book on moral diseases I made out a plan for one, and found that it was equivalent to a work on the science and art of religion, and that it included the manual designed for the edification of the Chinese student. The limits imposed by time and space, and other considerations, have prevented me from discussing many important questions which ought to find a place in any complete system of religion, but I have endeavoured to include sufficient to justify the title of the book, and also to give the Chinese student a fair idea of the meaning of Christianity.

The great need for a text-book like the present will be made evident at once by asking any man what is the meaning of the science and art of religion ; for I

PREFACE. IX

have never met any one able to give a rational answer to the question, and the art of religion is supposed to treat of the architecture, or the music, or some of the other human inventions by which the practice of the art of religion is made pleasant, but which are of no more importance to it than the easy-chair or the carriage of a surgeon is to the art of surgery.

The design exhibited on the cover has been taken from a jewel which is highly prized by freemasons, but I have ventured to place a blazing star in the centre, instead of the human face with the compasses and sphere. Freemasonry appears to me to represent the societies formed by Hebrew and Egyptian priests, and by priests of all ancient nations, to preserve the sacred symbolical language of primitive man before his degradation ; and freemasonry has especially to deal with the collection of sacred symbols made by Solomon and embodied in the Temple. The majority of freemasons probably see nothing in their society beyond a social and benevolent club, and are content to learn a ritual by rote without having any idea of its spiritual meaning, though they are taught that freemasonry is " a system of morality, veiled in allegory, and illustrated by symbol." The essential teaching of freemasonry is the duty of striving after perfect archetypes, and especially of cultivating the mind to perfection by the worship of the Archetypal Mind. One of the earliest positive masonic commands was that given by God to Abram, •* Walk before Me, and be thou perfect."

X PREFACE.

The mind is composed of the intellect or reason, the emotion or feeling, and the will or volition, and these are surrounded and supported by the memory. The intellect corresponds to the brain, the emotion to the nerves, the will to the muscles, and the memory to the blood ; while the spirit, or ego, or consciousness, is the life. The spirit is represented by the blazing star in the centre of the equilateral triangle, and the science and art of religion treat of the cultivation of the intellect, the emotion, and the will by the spirit : the mind is perfect when the three elements of mind are equally cultivated and in perfect harmony with one another ; and the circle which surrounds the triangle symbolizes perfection as well as memory. My design shows the perfect mind as existing after death, when the compasses and square will be no longer needed to correct deformities ; but the masonic design represents Adam before the Fall, when, although his mind was perfect, he had to keep constantly on his guard against imperfection. The freemasons show the spirit, or the man, as provided with the compasses, to indicate that man has been i^iven a conscience to recognize the perfect, and that it ' is his duty to make his own mind perfect no matter how little his ability, since a circle is equally perfect whether large or small.

The spirit has to aim at producing the perfection of honour, fidelity, and benevolence. The perfection of honour implies the perfection of truth and justice, which can only be attained by the worship of Archetypal

PREFACE. XI

Intellect : the perfection of fidelity implies the perfection of self-sacrificing love, which can only be known by the worship of Archetypal Emotion ; and the perfection of benevolence implies perfection of will, which can only be attained by the worship of the Archetypal Will.

The spirit must keep before it the perfect ideals of wisdom, beauty, and strength. The perfection of wisdom is only found in the reason in harmony with Archetypal Reason : the perfection of beauty is the moral character in harmony with Archetypal Emotion ; and the perfection of strength is the will conscious of harmony with the Archetypal Will.

Perfection necessarily implies happiness, and therefore truth, peace, and concord must be the evidence of the work of the spirit whose ideal is perfection. No man can know truth but he who knows the Wisdom of God : no man can know peace but he who is conscious of the Love of God ; and no man can have concord between his reason, his emotion, and his will, unless his life is in harmony with the Will of God.

A healthy child is not merely free from pain, like a man drunk or under chloroform, but its existence is a delight : it feels pleasure in making . a noise without having anything to say, in walking without thinking of any destination, in seeing without thinking of the object looked at, and even in exercising the muscles of the face so as to make grimaces. Exercise of function must produce positive enjoyment in the healthy body, and no

XU PREFACE.

system of medicine can be scientific which asks a man to be satisfied with toothache and to console himself with the hope of being free from it after death. The healthy mind must rejoice in happiness corresponding to the enjoyment felt from the possession of a healthy body, and no system of religion is scientific which asks a man to be content with unhappiness in hope of being comfortable after death. The power to produce permanent peace of mind and consciousness of bliss is the test of the scientific value of any religion.

When we examine the religion of the ancient Hebrews, we find that they were able to call upon everything that lives to rejoice and praise the Lord : they were able to sing, "O be joyful in God all ye lands ; sing praises unto the honour of His Name, make His praise to be glorious ; " and their confidence in God enabled them to say, " Let the righteous be glad and rejoice before God ; let them also be merry and joyful." The present was to them a scene of intellectual and emotional joy, and they had perfect faith and confidence in the future ; so that they must have known the true science and art of religion.

When wc turn to Christianity, we find that Christ expressly promised perfect peace and joy to all His followers, and thus differed from all religious teachers before or since, with the exception of Jehovah speaking by the Hebrew prophets. Christ said, " These things have I spoken unto you that My joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full ; " and the great

PREFACE. xiii

object of all His teaching was to obtain for men the " kingdom of God," or the state of perfect happiness and delight. S. Paul told the Romans that the kingdom of God is " righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost ; " and he wrote to the Philippians, " Rejoice in the Lord alway : and again I say, Rejoice." S. Peter declared that all Christians ** rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory ; " and the perfect joy was the result of the satisfaction of the reason, the emotion, and the will. Hence Christians must know the true science and art of religion.

Chapter I. . * I'agr

General Ignorance of the Scientific Basis of Religion — Difficulties of a Scientific Student of Religion— Meaning and Object of Rational Religion — Causes of Error in Religion — Mutual Dependence of Body and Mind — Necessity for Cultivation of the Material Body — The Test for the Scientific Value of any Religious Teaching ... 1-26

Chapter II

Evolution Inconsistent with Scientific Religion — Darwin as Fetish for Students — Evolution based on Ignorance of Facts — Biblical Account of Creation — Credulity of Evolutionists— The Late Rev. Henry Ward Beecher on Evolution— Darwin's only Original Theory : that of Coral Reef Formation ... ... ... ... 27-72

Chapter III

Evolution never logically accepted by any Man — Evolution opposed to. Historical Facts — Degradation as much a Law of Nature as Evolution— Supposed Evolution of Religion — The Mind of Man Unsatisfied by the Material World ... ... *.. ... ... 73-106 xvi CONTENTS.

Chapter IV

pa(;k

Scientific Basis of Religion — Archetypes of Intellect, Emotion, and Will — Christ as the Emotional Archetype — The Trinity in Unity — The Relation of Archetypal Intellect to Archetypal Emotion — The Result of Denial of the Supremacy of Archetypal Intellect ... ... 107-132

Chapter V

Mutual Relations of Persons in Trinity — Necessity of Worshipping each Person equally — The Work of Archetypal Will — Worship of the Trinity by the Ancient Hebrews, and by the Ancient Greeks ... ... ... 133-160

Chapter VI

Colon so as a Biblical Critic —The Religion and Language of Adam— Adam's Description of the Perfect Human Mind — The Garden of Eden — The Rivers in Eden— Adam's Mode of Instructing his Children— The Story of Balaam —The Story of Noah— The Sign of Jonah ... 161-21 1

CHAPTER VH.

The Name of God— How Adam taught Religion to His Children— How Adam described Elohim and Jehovah— The Worship of El, of Elohim, and of Jehovah—" The Coming Battle "—The Linguistic and Materialistic Critics of the Hebrews— Colenso's Criticism of the Psalms— The Jewish Loss of Knowledge of Elohim ... 212-261

CONTENTS. XVll

Chapter VIII. Page

The Earliest Human Records display Perfect Knowledge of the Science and Art of Religion — The Cherubim — Ezekiel's Description of Cherubim — EzekiePs Instructions to the Manufacturers of Idols — S. John's Description of Cherubim (Seraphim?) — The Seraphim — The Sphinx — The Urim and Thummim ... ... ... ... 262-296

Chapter IX

Religion has no Meaning except to the Spiritually-minded — Religion as an Art — The Painting of Samson — The Worship of the Baalim — The Worship of the Ashtaroth — The Temple of Solomon — The Hebrews — Melchisedek — Christ, the Son, or the Anointed — The Hebrew Worship of the Holy Spirit — Intellect, Emotion, and Will must be equally cultivated ... ... ... ... 297-365

CHAPTER I. A TIME must come in the life of every student worthy

of the name when the consideration of the material

world will fail to satisfy his mind, and when the mere

experience of others, even if supported by the authority

of revelation, will seem a food of empty husks to the

deep cravings of the hungry heart ; for he will have to

learn that "never yet hath mortal drunk a draught

restorative, that welled not from the depth of his own

soul." The teachings of religion may have been accepted

with the most unquestioning obedience, and every

influence of the home, and even of society, may have

been such as seemed best fitted to maintain complete

tranquillity of mind in the enjoyment of a virtuous

life ; yet circumstances will occur in which the doctrines

regarded as most sacred will be exposed to hostile

criticism, and even the foundations on which the whole

belief is built may be denied. If the teaching has been

B firmly grounded on the perfect reason, no serious doubt can ever agitate the mind ; yet the individual will be at first as puzzled by the ridicule of his religion and by the disbelief of all he holds as true, as a child will be who always has believed in the existence of America, and in the truth of the descriptions given by those who claimed to know the country well because they had been there, but who has been obliged to leave his home and to reside among the natives of an island who all agree to laugh at the belief that any land exists which they themselves have never seen, so that the only proof which possibly can satisfy their minds must be a personal visit to the land in question. As a rule, however, the early life of students is not the undisturbed development of faith and confidence in a religion, and in many cases the English boy supposed to be well educated is very little in advance of ancient heathendom in knowledge of a God, and is preserved from falling into barbarism, not by the consciousness of any perfect guide, but by repression exercised by principles which permeate all the laws and customs with which he is surrounded, and of whose origin and authority he has never thought.

It might be naturally expected that those who are most favoured by advantages of wealth and rank would be the most accomplished in the study of their faith, but this is only true of those religions which permit oppression ; when those who claim the right to live in idleness, with slaves to toil for them, and whose heaven promises them opportunities of exercising tyranny, will feel that their religion is a necessary prop to their supremacy, and so the knowledge and acceptance of their creed becomes of prime importance for all who hold high offices of trust The Christian faith in its simplicity can never be received with satisfaction by any one who thinks that other men are born to be his servants, and hence to make it fashionable considerable changes must be made, in order to conceal its teaching of humility and self-denial ; but even with the most attractive polish and embroidery to hide its true appearance, it is essentially repulsive to all who wish to follow selfishness ; and so the Bible is instinctively avoided even by many who are delighted with religious books which give the truths most pleasant to the reader, and omit whatever might offend the pride of self. It thus happens that the learned and the wealthy, from whom the ignorant inquirer might expect the most exhaustive and reliable supply of information, are often utterly unable to furnish any light, and may even be possessed with the most intense hatred and scorn for Christianity. The men and women who possess the soundest knowledge of the Christian faith are often to be found among the poor and middle classes who go to Sunday schools, and are compelled to seek the consolation of religion by adversity, or are induced to seek the truth by competition of the sects to prove each other wrong ; for when a certain stage of pride is reached the child is thought too good to be a teacher or a pupil, and only fit to lead a useless life of ease, regarding knowledge of religion as something similar to food and dress supplied to order. In the dead sea of uniformity all individuals are left stationary until the hard and isolating crusts of forms and ceremonies and the accumulated repetitions of truths which cannot be assimilated, from loss of appetite and power of digestion, encircle each in shells of wearying monotony, and instead of living active forms we see the countless dead embodiments of selfishness.

The Eastern visitor who has no opportunities of studying the religious life of England, except such as are afforded by the crowded city and the fashionable church, can form but an imperfect notion of the intense sincerity and earnestness of those religious peasants who constitute the strong foundation of the state, and who, by piety and courage, have made their little island supreme throughout the world as champion of freedom and of truth. The true value of religion is always to be sought in its elevating influence on the poor, and the inhabitants of cities, as well as the opulent and cultured of the country, are ignorant of the true nature of Christianity unless they can appreciate the picture given by Burns in the " Cottar's Saturday Night," which describes the power of religion to raise the poorest labourer to an equality with the richest prince by making him a child of heaven. There is no priest, nor lord, nor angel, nor any power on earth or heaven to stand between the soul and its Creator, and in the consciousness of fellowship with God the peasant on a bed of straw can gaze with calm superiority on all the magnates of the earth whose minds can soar no higher than the clay. It is of the religion of the peasant that Burns has said —

" Compared with this, how poor Religion's pride In all the pomp of method and of art, ^

"When men display to congregations wide Devotion's ev'ry grace, except the heart !

THE SCIENCE AND ART OF RELIGION. S

The Power, incensed, the pageant will desert,

But haply, in some cottage far apart.

May hear, well-pleased, the language of the soul,

And in His Book of Life the inmates poor enroll/'

Many of those who are supposed to constitute the best educated men and women in England have no religious education, in spite of years of study at famous universities ; for they imagine that the ability to repeat words in various languages is education, and I have met many who had learned the names and attributes of gods of ancient Greece and Rome, whose knowledge of the God of modem England was not sufficient to enable them to give the smallest item of plain, intelligible information to a Chinese student regarding the religion of their native land, though their whole lives were influenced by its principles and every newspaper proclaimed its power. The stranger is left to fancy that some image or painted window is the idol, and that worship consists in the bowing of the body towards some particular direction in which some image or material emblem may be fixed, while prayers are quickly said. The diary of the Marquis Tseng shows that some of the information which at first most readily impressed his mind sufficiently to be recorded was that relating to the priests in France ; though after the first novelty of European life passed ofif, he no doubt found how difficult it is to find a European who can be believed as an impartial guide on questions of religion.

The general inability of Englishmen to give a foreign student any sensible account of their religion is little less than scandalous when we reflect on the enormous sums expended in the support of men supposed to teach the people the meaning of the Christian faith, and the fault is to be found in the neglect of theologians and preachers to adopt a logical and simple system, by which a man might study religion as he would study any other science. The Chinese student is allowed to fancy that Christianity in England is not the faith of those most eminent for intellect, and that it is in some way out of harmony with reason ; and when he comes to London he can hardly ever find a student able to reply with reason to his inquiries, while one or two of those opposed to Christianity will make so many protestations of their monopoly of reason, that they are often taken according to their own estimate, and not according to their merit.

Even when inquiries are made of clergymen, the puzzled student finds little light ; for if he innocently asks the object of religion, he is told that it is to give him happiness for misery, and that the first step necessary is to believe in Jesus Christ in order that he may be saved. The words are meaningless to him, since they were only meant for one in great anxiety about salvation, while he is not troubled in the least about the future, but wishes to inquire into truth. One might as well prescribe a dose of medicine to a man because he makes inquiries as to the existence of disease and whether any medicine whatever is required on the earth. Another clergyman may inform him that the object of Christianity is to save him from hell, and that there is no other name given by which he can be saved except Christ Jesus ; but he is not aware of the existence of a hell, and finds many companions who ridicule belief in such a place, while even clergymen throw doubts upon it From another teacher of religion he may learn that the great benefit derived from a belief in Christianity is the possession of a hope and confidence with which a man may think of death without terror ; but the student knows that thousands of the followers of Mohammed have often rushed to death without a fear, and full of certainty of their reception into paradise, while the Japanese have calmly killed themselves without assistance even from fanaticism. If the seeker after truth goes to some church which claims to be distinguished for its recognition of the supremacy of reason, and inquires what is the special object to be gained by studying religion and attending church, he will be told that it is a duty commanded in the Bible that we are not to forget the assembling of ourselves together, and that the mind is relieved and comforted and the intellect instructed by such meeting ; but the inquirer may find more comfort to his mind in an opera, and more instruction in a botanical excursion.

The difficulty of satisfying the reason encounters the student still more when he wishes to know what he must believe in order to be recognized as orthodox. He will be given the Apostles' Creed, and on asking why he should believe it, he will be told that it is taught in the Bible ; but this is merely mockery to him, since it is an appeal to history and authority, while he is a scientific student wishing for arguments to satisfy his reason, and one might as well insist that a medical student should believe in the existence of the lungs and liver because historians assert the fact. He is asked to believe in the Trinity, and receives no satisfactory reply when he demands why one God is not sufficient, or why there are not four. He is told that certain doctrines are essential to be believed, while others are only matters of opinion, and he is thought heretical and unreasonable because he asks the reasons that make a doctrine a necessary article of faith. Students require a text-book of religion just as much as a text-book of physiology, and my object is to reduce religion to a science, both theoretical and practical.

The object of medical science is first to cure all existing diseases, and, secondly, to prevent all disease in the future. The prevention of all disease implies the production of physical perfection, and to attain such a condition we must eliminate all causes of imperfection due to heredity and to environment. The influence of heredity, although of great importance, is generally exaggerated, for there is scarcely any disease truly hereditary, except that due to special vice, and the common belief about the inheritance of consumption is an error, for it is only . weakness or imperfection of certain tissues that is inherited and not the disease ; so that the extraordinary influence which the environment can exercise on any animal, especially during the period of growth, seems competent to eliminate all hereditary evil in two generations, though some serious defects may extend as curses to the third and fourth generations. We know that a plant or animal will be straight or crooked, deformed or perfect, according to the conditions which surround it, in spite of all advantages it may inherit ; and the most deh'cate, imperfect germ of any species, if only capable of living to maturity, can, by the aid of art and cultivation, or rather by conformity to nature, be made the parent of a progeny from which the perfect species can be reproduced.

Besides the ordinary beneficial effects which we may expect from the tendency to conform to a perfect original type, and the improvement to be derived from healthy surroundings, we are warranted in believing that nature has provided remedies for every disease ; so that by further discoveries in the use of medicines we may hope to gain the power of arresting all tendency to grow in a distorted form, and of imparting strength and harmony to those tissues of the body which have inherited or acquired any weakness or defective power. This is not by any means an extravagant expectation, for at present we see every day the infant that is pining away from specific inherited disease made quickly to become plump and healthy-looking by the influence of medicine ; and it is remarkable that the triumph over disease is most evident in the case which is especially cursed with heredity ; so that it seems as if nature were anxious to be merciful by providing antidotes to remove evil, as well as by revealing the necessary measures to insure prevention. The end of all medical science is the attainment of physical perfection.

Religion is the medical science of mind, and its object must be first the cure of all existing moral evil, and, secondly, the prevention of all such evil by the production of moral perfection, which implies perfect happiness. The mere student of physical science can know nothing of religion, and he is liable to imagine that we are only what heredity and environment make us ; whereas the inheritor of a perfect body and a perfect environment possesses a will which has the power of producing ruin by destruction of perfection when it pleases. When an individual ceases to possess a will which can destroy perfection, he ceases to exist. Religion is the science which responds in the affirmative to the demand —

*' Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased ; Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow ; Raze out the written troubles of the brain ; And, with some sweet oblivious antidote, Cleanse the stufTd bosom of that perilous stuff "Which weighs upon the heart ? "

In the study of rational religion it is necessary to bear in mind as a first principle that reason is the supreme judge of all truth, and when any statement of fact or doctrine is opposed to reason it must be rejected without the slightest hesitation and without the slightest respect ; for there is no greater sin than that of professing to believe what the reason condemns. There is, however, a very important distinction to be observed between what is opposed to reason and what is beyond the judgment of the reason owing to imperfection of knowledge or capacity ; for while a man is a criminal before reason if he maintains that a horse is a tree when he is conscious that it is an animal, or if he says that two and two make five when he knows that they are only four, yet the savage judges without knowledge when he says that no man can ascend into the air under any circumstances, since the use of a balloon makes ascension easy.

In spite of the utmost apparent fidelity to reason there are, however, very great differences in the conclusions arrived at by those who profess to study religious questions in a rational manner ; and such differences are due to various causes, among which two are especially worthy of attention. Religion has to deal with facts of consciousness, and not with facts of the material world which can be demonstrated to the senses, and no two men will have exactly similar experience, so that what impresses itself very strongly on the mind of one may never have been thought of, or may be considered of no importance, by another. The facts of consciousness may be truly said to have no existence, except to him who has experienced them ; and so the man who has never been in love can have no sympathy with those who are, but will rather say with Benedick, "I will not swear but love may transform me to an oyster, but Til take my oath on it, till he have made an oyster of me, he shall never make me such a fool." One man knows by experience the miseries produced by pride and envy, but when he wishes to proclaim the bitter sorrow he has suffered from his own failure or the prosperity of some rival, he finds no sympathy from a friend who cares nothing for pride or love or envy, but only how he best may satisfy his appetite and gratify his senses.