What is religion?

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School se iit

Theology Library } ane SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY ce: AT CLAREMONT California

WHAT IS RELIGION ?

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION HESE lectures are to deal with a subject of

the greatest importance, the knowledge

of the phenomenon which is known by that

foreign word “ religion,” and in dealing with this

we are brought face to face with the most

momentous, the most powerful factor that affects the mental life of mankind.

Wherever we look we find that practically no tribe or community of human beings is without some kind of a religion, although those scholars may possibly be right in thinking they have discovered here and there, in some corner of the world, small tribes who are entirely without it. It does not, of necessity, follow that this conclusion is merely due to false and insufficient investigation. It is quite true that traces of a religion are but rarely met with in the excavations and discoveries belonging to the earlier Stone Age and are only found to any large

2 1 extent in the later period. Yet these excavations throw light on a period removed from us by many thousand years, a period, however, in which man already possessed a religion. And although, naturally, there must be some point of time when religion had its beginning, it is still incontestable that wherever human life advanced a stage religion was evolved. Religion has conducted man to his highest point of civilisation; and this is so in our own time. To-day, it is true, we are confronted by the fact that, as has usually happened in periods of excessive culture, numerous sections of the people are separated from religion, but we are justified in considering this as merely a passing phase. Modern society and modern civilisation in both Europe and America are still connected in a thousand ways with religion. It must not be forgotten that at the beginning of the twentieth century the Churches are much more powerful and stable than they were a hundred or a hundred and fifty years ago, and that the religious bodies of North America which are in no wise supported by the State display great vitality. And again, this fact must not be overlooked, that among the most highly cultured people, among the leaders of thought, even when they are not in harmony with the established religion, there is an interest in religious matters and a spirit of inquiry concerning them. It is only, indeed, in times of the greatest and most widespread intellectual decadence that religion reaches its lowest ebb, and there never has been, and never will be, a civilisation which is progressive and vital unaccompanied by religion.

“ Men,” says Goethe, “are only creative in Poetry and Art as long as they are religious; without religion they are merely imitative, lacking in originality.” Religion has exercised the most profound influence on human life; it may truly be said that all progress in human life has been evolved in close connection with religion, and indeed it almost seems as if religion were the source of this progress. The use of fire, by which mankind appears to have been originally distinguished from the animal world, owes its origin, as far as we know, to the religious worship of that wondrous element. Innumerable traces bear witness to the fact that the kindling, the looking after, and the maintenance of the fire were religious acts, and we are justified in believing that even before man understood how to use or produce fire he worshipped it. Again, there is evidence in the customs of savage nations that the breeding of cattle, the taming of them, and the use of domestic animals are closely connected with the religious worship ‘of these creatures. The earliest artistic manifestations of mankind, if not exclusively religious, are yet intimately related to religion. The ornaments with which the savage decorates his body, the marks he imprints upon it, the pictures he paints upon it, possess an important religious significance, the significance of the magic talisman and the amulet. The most ancient dances are religious dances—the dance of joy at the feast, the circular dance when a sacrifice was offered. Israel danced round the golden calf, King David before the Ark of the Covenant. Side by side with the religious dance was religious music. The early prophets of Israel marched to the sound of harp, drum, flute, and _ zither (1 Sam. x. 5).

It is a debatable point whether the various pictorial representations on stone, horn, and ivory, in high or low relief, which date from the very earliest period of human history— the early Stone Age—are due to a religious motive or to an instinct for imitation and amusement, or to a purely essthetic impulse. What is certain, however, is this, that among all civilised peoples the plastic art has developed in close connection with the representation of the Divinity, just as architecture owes its progress tothe building of tombs, pyramids, obelisks, terraces, and temples of the gods.

The idea of public, inviolable right rests on a religious basis, on the belief that the anger of the Godhead demands from the whole community of worshippers expiation for the wrong done, and that this anger lasts till atonement is rendered. The rudiments of human knowledge originated in connection with religion. The ancient wise men of Babylon held in the very highest reverence the starry powers which ruled in the heavens, for according to their belief these governed the destinies of men. And from this belief arose the foundations of human knowledge: the careful observation of the heavenly bodies, accurate chronology, knowledge of measurements, the first attempt at mathematics. Lastly, the connection between morals and religion is so obvious and so close that it is only necessary to refer to it.

In courseiof time Religion released from her bonds the various provinces of mental activity which hitherto had been under her domination. This marked a great advance in the history of mankind, by which Religion also benefited. She was deprived of nothing. What she lost in breadth she gained in depth and concentrated energy. In spite of separation from other branches of human activity, religion has ever remained the central interest of this activity, and wherever the surging roar of life has been loudest, and wherever human life has been most profoundly moved in struggle and conflict, religion has been the cause.

The object of this little book is to understand the meaning of this phenomenon which we call religion. What a many-sided, Protean idea is presented to us, what a confusing jangle of sounds! Here we encounter joyous confidence, sure of heaven; there frightful, soul-destroying agony; egoism of the rudest type, and a joy in sacrifice which, in the form of the sacrifice of men, children, and sexual honour, shows itself under its most terrible aspect. The tenderest lyrical tones of entrancing sweetness are to be met with as well as the barbaric, awful cruelty of the religious war, the auto-da-fé and the Inquisition; the renunciation of the ascetic, of the solitary penitent, of the monk, side by side with the triumphant note of the priest and the prince of the Church who subdues his people and the world. It is a world in which we think we hear the angels singing, and yet close by distorted, demoniacal spirits and all kinds of monstrosities pursue their way. Now we are in the presence of sublime rest, tranquillity, simplicity, now of a witches’ cauldron of storm-tossed passion.

How can we find our way through this mass of phenomena? Many people show us an apparently simple way: they tell us the question concerning the nature of religion is merely the question of the nature of Christianity. Christianity alone (they say) is the true religion; all others are false, and the further men progressed the more corrupt did the other religions of man become, for humanity had been corrupt since the fall of Adam. Or they tell us the religion of the Old and New Testaments is revealed religion ; all others are natural religions, the product of man’s thought or imagination, and without any guarantee of their truth and permanence.

Against this widespread opinion the following points are offered for consideration :

1. The view here asserted that God allows the nations that have not accepted the revelation of the Old and New Testaments to go their own way, sinking deeper and deeper into darkness and decay, is, if we consider the whole bearings of it, a narrow-minded and melancholy view of the history of humanity. It is, in truth, an irreligious and Godless attitude. Apart from its falsity, it is a dangerous apologetic for Christian theologians to attempt with great sagacity—apparently in order to maintain the honour of the Christian religion—to prove that the non-Christian religions are illusions, products of the imagination and the intense desire of mankind. For this apologetic entirely forgets that the very arts which it employs can be used against itself, and the very same arguments may be used to prove that the Christian religion is an illusion.

2. The whole trend of human history is opposed to this view. Far indeed from show- | ing us an evolution from a higher to a lower civilisation, or the arbitrary play of forces, history (in spite of many periods of stagnation and retrogression) shows us very clearly great and stable progress, a slowly developed but firm aspiration after higher ideas and a more intense life in which religion participates. The theologian who traces the history of religion from a higher to a lower plane does not see how he is entirely opposed to our knowledge of the intellectual life of mankind.

3. The whole history of religion and of free inquiry concerning religion is opposed to this theory. This shows us the history of the Old and the New Testament so closely connected with the religious history of the surrounding peoples and civilisations that the distinction between revealed and natural religion is impossible. The history of the Old Testament religion shows us a progress from a lower to a higher stage, a slow growth from imperfection to perfection. Ecclesiastical history also reveals in the development of Christianity an ever purer conception— gradual, it is true—of the religion of the spirit and of truth which is displayed in the Gospels. It is no question of, This religion is true, that is false; everywhere we perceive growth, evolution, imperfection striving towards perfection.

Thus for the reasons just stated we proceed on our inquiries from a different standpoint, which will be justified in the course of further explanation. The whole history of the religious life of mankind stands to us as the great handiwork of God, a ceaseless aspiration and constant intercourse of God with man, of man with his Maker, in accordance with the stage to which he has attained. The religion of the Old and the New Testaments, however, represents, as we shall see, the purest form of religion, and the Gospel, to say the least, the highest and most perfect form to which it has reached. But in spite of this, Christianity is not the one religion, the only religion, but simply the most complete species of the genus.

Hence, in this book, where we are not so much concerned with the practical application of religion as with a clearly defined knowledge of it, the question concerning the nature of religion is of the first importance, that of ro What is Religion ?

Christianity being secondary. For from a comparative study of the genus we learn to understand thoroughly and completely the most perfect of its species, just as comparative anatomy reveals to us very clearly the highly developed organism of man. The answer to the inquiry concerning the nature of Christianity is not, however, easily given. If we want to separate, with clear perception, the essential from the non-essential, and discover with certainty, in the changing forms of temporary expressions, the eternal, everlasting basis, we cannot do better than apply ourselves to the comparative study of religions.

In pursuing this inquiry concerning religion we turn with complete confidence to the whole wonderful history of religion. In studying this history we must group together phenomena, and arrange them in their right order; we must seize the essential and the permanent in the phenomena as they pass before our eyes, recognise the laws of evolution, and connect the past with the present and the future.

But before dealing with the mass of phenomena, it is to be recommended on pedagogical grounds that some propositions of a general kind should be made touching the nature of religion. Not that these propositions might not be obtained from history itself, or that they

Introduction II would not be just as well obtained in the course of an historical survey ; but just as before going into a labyrinthine building it is as well to look at the plan, so these general remarks may be found useful. They will serve as the basis; observations obtained, as it were, from a bird’seye view, which will receive shape, energy, and illumination from later statements.

First of all, it must be clearly noted that religion is a fundamental element in the mental life of mankind, of a primary and not a derivative character. At any rate, the attempts hitherto made to reduce religion to a simple elementary function have failed. Attempts have been made to derive religion from the Kausalitdtsdrang, the instinct for knowledge; to consider it “the instinctive thought,” the elementary stage of true philosophic thought ; to degrade it to an esthetic illusion or to accept its propositions as postulates for the basis of ethics. Opposed to this is the view that in religion we are dealing with a powerful primary manifestation of human personality, derived from nothing, not to be reduced to one of the categories belonging to man’s mental life, such as thinking, feeling, willing, but a phenomenon standing by itself.

It is indeed a correct observation, which can be substantiated, that religion is a “striving after life.” History reveals to us on all sides this striving after life; on all sides we see religion concerned with blessings. These blessings are of different kinds: earthly blessings, appertaining to individual life, such as rain, fertility, sunshine, good hunting, health, the cure of sickness. Then, again, there are the blessings connected with the life of the community: dominion, victory in war, peace, protection of trade and industry, right, freedom, . universal prosperity; or the nobler blessings of a future life: a happy fate after death, life with the gods or with one God, reconciliation, forgiveness of sin and guilt, inward peace, moral justice. Even the mystic—who surrenders his own life, and absorbs himself in the Godhead ; or the Buddhist monk, animated by a wish to free himself from life and attain to absolute rest—regards the perfect renunciation of his being as a boon in comparison with the painful torment of this worldly existence. Religion is everywhere seen to be a striving after life, after possessions.

The subject of religion may be clearly and accurately distinguished from the other great subjects with which man’s mental life is concerned. In our moral dealings the motive of which we are conscious is not, in the first instance, a striving after possessions, though it is certain that our ultimate object is to obtain things of priceless worth. But the moral law faces man with stern demands, ignoring all his desires ; it confronts him with “Thou shalt” and “Thou shalt not,” and oppresses his life as with a strange burden. The aspiration after Truth— it is universally admitted—is only of value when it is completely disinterested. Science and art must be entirely disinterested ; the investigator must regard the highest interests of human life as secondary to the interest of Truth. The love of the Beautiful is of a more intense and personal nature, but, as a clever art critic has remarked, it is, and must ever be, an abstract love. It is a love springing from intense contemplation, in which the object remains a thing quite apart from the person interested in it. The desire to have this beauty, to wish to gain possession of it, is no longer zesthetic, and mars the pure, intuitive vision of beauty.

Now, religion stands in complete contrast to all this, for everything connected with it is of the keenest, deepest personal interest. Our will power and our feelings are worked up to the highest point of tension; we desire to have, to possess, to be something. Religion can awaken in us the most intense feeling ; it unfetters our mental powers, kindles our firiest passions,

There is a fomenting, a seething, a wild surging of the good and evil elements within us.

And just because religion is a striving after life it is brought into a peculiarly close and yet a curiously antagonistic relation to every department of human activity which is concerned with the striving after possessions. This peculiar relation does not exist between religion and science, art or morality. Between these it would be easy to establish a profitable and mutually beneficial relation. Antagonisms and contradictions exist but in appearance; they are due to one or the other overstepping the limits of its domain, and they can generally be set right, though often only with time and difficulty.

Much more profound and impenetrable is the problem of religion and civilisation. Religion obtains the benefits which she offers to mankind in a manner different from that which human activity employs to obtain them. Religion stands towards human activity in a peculiarly friendly, yet often hostile relation; she is often, nay usually, the pioneer of new modes of activity of a civilising nature which were not originally due to civilisation, but were the expression and outcome of man’s religious life. As we have already mentioned, the use of fire was most probably preceded by the worship of fire; worship created its use. When once fire was completely mastered by man, and forced into his service, then (allowing for a considerable number of exceptions) fire-worship ceased. From an object of religious belief fire became the most powerful instrument of civilisation. We have another and a nearer example which can be more easily understood. The belief that the Godhead would avenge the sin of the individual on the whole tribe, town, or nation, causes the tribe, &c., in its own interest to guard against every gross infringement of the law on the part of any individual; hence the idea of public rights is created. The belief vanishes, but the idea of public obligation becomes a powerful lever in the progress of civilisation. Thus civilisation is always the fortunate heiress of religion—fortunate, and yet in a sense unfortunate, for she is never able to enjoy her inheritance quite wholeheartedly. At the very moment when religion gives to civilisation a province of human life for secular use it shows mankind new and higher possessions beyond the horizon of all earthly goods. Her constant cry to civilisation is, “ The life which you offer is not the highest of blessings.” She imprints on all the works of civilisation the stamp of the transient, the means towards an end. She places the real value of life beyond: Sursuwm corda!—“Lift up your hearts !”

But when we consider the relation of religion to civilisation we at once clearly perceive that the definition of religion as a striving after life, after possessions, is inadequate. It is as if we defined music as a noise. Progress, it is true, is based on a striving after life, after possessions, but we need a further distinguishing characteristic of religion; we have found one focus of the ellipse, we must seek another.

We ask ourselves in what way this strife after life is accomplished by religion, and we reply that this is effected in conjunction with the higher powers, spirits, demons, heroes, gods, the Godhead—God. For in all religion we find as a second determining factor the belief in gods or God. The solitary exception is the Buddhist religion, in which there is no thought of a God, and later an attempt will be made to understand this exception.

This second factor in religion—belief in gods —cannot be derived from the first, although many attempts have been made to do so. People have sought to show that this belief in gods arises from the primal necessities of man’s life, and have brought forward evidence to prove that the different types of gods clearly correspond to the different wants and ideals of humanity. Here we are dealing already with an hypothesis which goes beyond the spiritual phenomenon we are considering, and does violence to it. For wherever we have religious life the gods (or the Godhead) are regarded as absolute realities, more real even than human life. So that if that hypothesis of the purely illusionary significance of belief in gods is to be accepted, how can we explain the predominance of the feelings of fear and anguish in the lowest stages of religion? If the gods owe their origin merely to the wishes of men, and are born of their material needs, how can we explain that dominating element in religion, since man as a creative being can do what instinctive man cannot do? We therefore maintain from the outset the twofold basis of religion—striving after possessions and belief in gods—without hastily explaining it and simplifying it. Rather, we proceed further with these questions: What are these higher powers? what is meant by reverencing gods, worshipping a God? What is it that impels men to honour some of the powers which rule around them, and not to honour others? How is belief, religion, kindled ? First of all we observe, when we consider the course of religious history, that it is the strange, the marvellous, the incalculable and the mighty forces that arouse religious veneration. From the very earliest times there has ever been a close connection between faith and wonder. Very early does man begin to divide his world into the known and the unknown. Even the lowest type of savage possesses a part of the known world—the cave wherein he dwells, the hunting implements which he uses, the animals he masters and tames, perhaps even a little piece of ground which he cultivates, a hut which he builds. We may therefore venture on the supposition that only when from the immense whole man has divided off for himself a little piece of land which he calls his world does he, filled with immeasurable wonder, rise to the idea of religious veneration. And it is here, on the boundary line between the known and the unknown, that religion originates.

The forest which surrounds the savage is full of spirits; he is conscious of a rustling, a crackling, a creaking, a whispering, of singing and noises. In the woods the elves and kobolds, the fauns and the dryads, the little men and women of the woods, disport themselves. The summits of the mountains are an unknown world; many a one has ascended them and never returned. The avalanches crash down from them, the waters roar. There dwell the mischievous wood-demons, the stone-throwing centaurs, “ Rubezahl,” Pan who frightens the herdsmen, Dionysus with his wild hordes. And besides all these there are the ghosts, the dead whose continued existence is regarded as a matter of course by the childlike mind of the primitive savage. Such spirits are not regarded as especially powerful; they are indeed dependent on the care of the living; they are spoken of as “poor souls.” But they are strange, inexplicable, and dwell in the mysterious unknown world. In the gloom of the twilight, in the darkness of the night, by the graves and the cross-roads, they carry on their ghostly existence—Hecate and her savage tribe, the wild huntsman and his hounds. What a profound impress this belief in spirits and ghosts has left even on the mind of modern man! And now a wonderful and remarkable drama begins: gradually man extends the limits of his world, and from this world which is now known to him, which he has explored and governs, the spirits and gods vanish. Yet the unknown world, the world of faith and religion, never vanishes. The farther man penetrates the more unfathomable becomes that unknown world; the more he learns to rule the world, the more mysterious, wonderful, and immense appears that world which he does not command, and the more he knows about it the more incomprehensible he feels it to be. For one riddle that he solves ten others confront him. And it is here, on the boundary-line of the known and the unknown world, that religion is kindled.

From the spirits which rule on the earth man turns his glance to the heavenly powers which blow, rustle, rage, thunder, lighten, rain, shine, sparkle, and illumine, which bring life, light and prosperity; to the powers which dwell beneath the earth and bring fruitfulness and harvest to the fields, which rule over life and death. No longer does he seek the gods only in the marvellous, the unexpected, the strange, the inexplicable, but also in the still more wonderful, mysterious and_ eternal ordinances of the universe. To the Greeks Moira, Fate (Fatum) was the mightiest power, to which even the gods bowed; the native of India expresses the idea of unalterable law by the word rita, the Persian Asha. And thus the gods become the spiritual powers which, in accordance with eternal, inviolable laws, guide the destinies of the nations in holiness and righteousness. But still the primitive idea of religion always remains the same, fear of the mysterious, superior power of the gods, which the Greek by his dcoi ypetrrovec (“the gods are more than mortals”) has expressed with absolute clearness.

Let us consider how this idea works out. To us moderns it is also the basis of all religion. For however greatly the known world has widened for us, still larger looms the unknown world. With all our great capacity we remain throughout our life chained and confined to our little planet. The Kopernican theory has taught us that this our planet is no longer the middle point of the world, as an earlier knowledge believed, but merely an atom in the universe. We are all drifting along in frail skiffs, and everywhere we are surrounded by dizzy abysses. Whether, armed with a telescope, we gaze at the infinitely great and perceive one starry world revolving round another, or with a microscope we study the infinitely little; whether we lift our eyes to the Milky Way, or cast them down towards the smallest pebbles of the great universe, at the molecules and the atoms, we are for ever possessed of this dizzy feeling of the abysses which surround our life. And amid all this wondrously great and wondrously little there is a noble, mysterious striving and aspiration in life in all its forms, after inviolable and inflexible laws before which we stand amazed. Thus, in my opinion, it is just to us modern men that the basis of all religion is seen to be trembling fear and reverence for the great realities amid which we live. Every one who is susceptible to this feeling is, and must be, susceptible to religion.

But just as when we said that religion was a striving after life, after possessions, we had not completely defined it, so in saying that it is a timid, reverential recognition of the superior powers of spirits and gods, of the Godhead or God, we have also given no complete definition. Rather is it that in these two attitudes of mind we have found the true foci, and now we must seek to define the circumference of religion.

In bringing these two attitudes into closer connection it may be said on the one hand that religion is not merely an egoistic striving after possessions, the attempt of man to assert his individuality in the world around him, by which means his subordinate position is brought closer to the Godhead. We see that religion is, as well as this, something higher, a simple feeling of self-surrender to the Godhead. In all stages of religion we meet with phenomena which display this aspect in absolute simplicity. We see the desire, often intensified to madness, to sacrifice to the Godhead all possessions, even life and sex honour (e.g., asceticism, expiation, human sacrifice, prostitution in the service of the gods). We have the casting of the being on the Godhead without any personal demand; spiritual absorption in Him, which leads to the entire surrender of the Ego (as in the case of the mystic); a striving after the very life of the Godhead, a longing after God which is expressed in its highest form in the saying, “If I have but Thee I ask for neither heaven nor earth.”

On the other hand, we may say that religion, if it is to remain healthy, can never be completely severed from the egoistic feeling; it cannot be mere reverence of the Godhead apart from all desires, nor simply the feeling of dependence. Healthy religion must always contain an element of personal interest; it must be personal relationship, a desire to render but likewise to receive. Religion is personal relation with the Godhead. Let us now examine a little more closely this statement that we have made, and the vivid contradictions to it which the life of religion unfolds.

Now, in every religion there are two aspects which must be considered together. On the one hand there are the superior powers which man worships, in their nature often hateful and mysterious ; he must flee from them, hide from them in horror, anguish, overwhelming fear and awe. And yet, on the other hand, he

OA. What is Religion ?

cannot get free from them; he does not, indeed, venture to do so, he clings to them, he feels himself connected with them, he belongs to them and they to him. He raises his hands inploringly towards them, he gives so that he may receive—he sacrifices; he believes that the gods hear him and take an interest in him and his doings. Only where these two beliefs are found together do we get true religion. In the lowest stages of religious life as a rule man only worships the inferior beings, the tiny spirits of nature, the souls of the dead, &c. He does indeed know of the superior powers in the heavens which storm, and rage, and shine, and illuminate, but this is mere religious feeling and is not religion. For he does not yet venture to believe that these powers are exercised on his behalf. Only very gradually have men come to this thought, and have turned their attention to the sun, the moon, the stars, which illumine, and have said to the God of heaven who storms and thunders, “Thou art our God and our Father.” Such a belief, indeed, lies at the root of all religion, a belief which ever increases until the Christ comes and says to the almighty God, “Thou art My Father.” All religion is— and the higher we rise the more true this is—a casting of the self into the abyss, a wondrous miracle of human confidence.