lllMIIIIIIIIIHIllillllMl Hill i\mi I .....illilljllillilllllilllilllililllliliiliiilliiiiilliiii!. .iiiiitiiiiiiiiitilll iuiii!ii[iini[iiiiiiii [iiiitniiiiiiiifiinfni V ^^ ^ToTTriSJ?^ NOV e 1913 ^Si SLOGiui ^ BL 51 .H3 Hall, Thomas Cuming, 18b«-, 1936. I Religion and life BY THE SAME AUTHOR Social Solutions in the Light of Christian Ethics Crown 8vo. Gold top. Net. $1.50 Historical Setting of the Early Gospel 12mo. Gold top. Net, 75 cents RELIGION AND LIFE V ^^ sjSTorregg NOV 6 1913 BY y \> THOMAS CUMING HALL^^^gj^^j^ ^^^V* Profeosor of Christian Ethics Union Theological Seminary, New York New York: EATON & MAINS Cincinnati : JENNINGS & GRAHAM Copyright, 1913, by THOMAS CUMING HALL IN LOVING MEMORY OF GEORGE WILLIAM KNOX, D.D. DIED IN SEOUL, KOREA, APRIL 25, 1912 CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. Our General Assumptions 1 II. Primitive Religion 27 III. The Twofold Interest 39 IV. The Prophetic Interest 56 V. Creative Idealism and Life 67 VI. Religion and Mastery of the Material World 83 VII. Religion and Society 94 VIII. Types of Religious Development 108 IX. Ethics and Religion 127 X. Religion and the State 140 Vll ANALYSIS OF THE ARGUMENT I Why our definition of religion must be general — A tentative definition of religion — The general im- portance of religion — ^The forms of religion either a waste or a benefit — ^The evidences that it is still a force — How shall we know whether it is true or not? — ^The character of knowledge — Experience as related to abstraction — Mathematics and knowl- edge — Knowledge and experiment — Knowledge and history — Religion and the personal life — ^The sci- entific method for the examination of religion. II The primitive character of religion — Relation of religion to mystery — The study of so-called prim- itive man — Religion and magic — Meaning of mdna and taboo — ^Religion as the whole complex of prim- itive life — Its unifying power — The dependence of forms upon stage of culture — The conserving char- acter of forms — ^The cycle of the seasons — Myths and customs — The rise of a pantheon — ^The veg- etative and the astronomical cycles — The marks of a religion upon the round of Ufe — Its traces in houses and music. Ill The priest and religion — ^The two types of re- ligious interest: the priestly and the prophetic — ix X ANALYSIS OF THE ARGUMENT Priestly interest in continuity — The ancient is the sacred — The priestly interest in order and cult — The rhythm of life and the education of the group under priestly control — ^The risk of overfunctioning — The basis of power in the authority — Priestly reaction and its reason — The danger to its ethics — Its thirst for power — Its services and degradation. IV The origin of the prophet — The relation of the prophet to the priest — The lowly origin — ^The dis- ruptive character — ^The false prophets — The dan- gers of the prophet — His vision — His relation to organization — ^The test of the prophet — Why we generally reject the true prophet. V The determinist controversy and its main error — ^The newness of each day's world — The self as a factor in the new world of to-day — ^The ideals of to-day as factors in to-morrow — The materials and ideals for each new world — Conditions and mastery of conditions — Religion and creative idealism — Faith and the transformation of life — Cooperation with God in the making a new world each day — God and the creative ideals — Ideals and material fact — Man's part in the process — The prophet and the creative ideal — The rapture and ecstasy in the creative ideal. VI The way religious ideals organize the material life — The influence of the temple — ^The religious ANALYSIS OF THE ARGUMENT xi league — ^The decline of the Roman empire and the reUgious factors— The guilds of the Middle Ages and their art — The force of religion as inspiration to material mastery — The group ideal and man's material mastery — The religious ideal and its dog- matic content — The religious ideal and national safety — ^The religious ideal and international fellow- ship. VII Religion and human organization — ^The religious factor in marriage; in blood revenge; in the treaty; in courts and vows — The place of religion to-day in social relations — National churches and their function — ^The meaning of religious conformity — Religion and working faith — The religious factor in our culture, at home and abroad — Religious propaganda — The effect of scientific doubt upon man's activity — Evolution and rehgious faith. VIII The three main emphases in man's life of the soul — ^The emotional emphasis — ^The intellectual em- phasis — ^The pragmatic emphasis — Why religion is so often thought of as mainly emotional — ^The two types of emotional religion, the aesthetic and the mystical — ^Byzantime Christianity and the emo- tional life — New England's religious life — ^The in- tellectual emphasis with its dogmatic and specu- lative interests — The pragmatic type with its emo- tional or intellectual color. xii ANALYSIS OF THE ARGUMENT IX Ethics and religion in past relationships — Both are concepts that have hitherto resisted satisfactory analysis — Knowledge and mystery for the naive and the modern mind — ^The constant relation of the self to the All — Religion and science as "explana- tions" of the universe — Ethics deal with our rela- tions to fellow men, and religion with God and the universe of which our fellow men are parts — The imperative of life — ^The physical, the psychic, the moral and the religious imperative — The formula- tions of these imperatives changing constantly — The ultimate relationship in a highest ideal — ^The explosive force of religious and ethical revelation — The test of vitality in both. X Political attitudes to religion and the church — The Reformation and the church — ^The United States and established religion — The fundamental reason underlying change of view — What is divine right? — ^The church and the law of service — Religious toleration and its basis — Religion and group solidarity — ^The cultural social bond — The claim to absolute knowledge in Middle Ages — Freedom and social solidarity — The transforming character of religious experience — Creeds and their uses — ^The use of words and the personal equation — ^The personal rights within an organization — Faith and its constant need for new forms of ex- pression. INTRODUCTION The opening years of our century mark a world-wide awakening. Men rise to question all the older formulae, and doubt has almost become the mark of a vital religion. Men and women ask with an in- creasing earnestness for a reason for the faith that is in them. Many are troubled by the doubts and difficulties that are raised on all sides; some timid ones are quite panic-stricken. It is in the hope that some help may be rendered to those whose own faith may have been shaken, or, if not, to those who are in contact with thoughtful and earnest doubt, that these lines are penned. These few chapters are written with no purpose of setting forth an elaborate de- fense of the several items of a system of Christian faith, but simply to clear the way for an inquiry. We wish to show the importance and dignity of the religious claim, and to demand for it the attention its past history and present power deserves. xiii xlv INTRODUCTION Even In institutions that claim to be Christian the fundamental things of a religious intelligence are all too often but lightly dealt with. It is often assumed that young minds still start with the pre- suppositions of the past, whereas, in fact, the teachings of certain classrooms in that same institution may have worked havoc with all those presuppositions. It is to thoughtful men and women who are not in any sense specialists on the fields here touched upon that these chapters are written, and the hope is that they may give a point of view from which a fruitful study of religion is possible. Great conden- sation has been aimed at, and many longer expositions have been sacrificed to keep the book within certain limits both of compass and of price. May the reading of these pages strengthen intelligent faith and lead to a vital union with God's purpose as re- vealed in the person and work of Christ Jesus our Lord. CHAPTER I Our General Assumptions Any definition of religion must be at the outset seemingly vague and tentative. The usefulness of any definition depends upon the purpose of the definition, and no defi- nition can be exact for all purposes. The failure to remember this has given rise to a bewildering variety of definitions of reli- gion, for, like all great fundamental words, the very usefulness of the conception is its inclusive character. Such words as "beauty ," "order," "line," "circle,"and "life" are only definite when the context is known in which they are used, for all these words describe a great variety of our common human experiences. How do we conceive of the beauty of a flower, or of music, or of a human face? What is beauty? When we say line, do we mean a definite mark- ing, or an imaginary circle like the equator, or a row of objects? Religion may be thought of as a definite, concrete develop- ment with cult and dogma, or as an inde- 1 2 RELIGION AND LIFE finable attitude of the human soul to the world of infinite being. Most of us have visual and particularistic minds. When anyone says "circle," we think generally of a particular circle, which then stands in some sort of symbolic relation to all cir- cles. So also when we hear the word "religion" we generally think of some complex of doctrines, or rites, or of some organization which we know, and only that which resembles what we thus know seems to us religion. A moment's reflection will show us that such a definition is too narrow for our purpose. Religious phenomena are so widely various that they cannot be judged by one type or one level of religious cul- ture. Indeed, it is difficult to find a com- mon characteristic that links all religious phenomena together. Not even belief in a personal God can be treated as absolutely essential, lest we rule out the higher forms of contemplative Buddhism which no one denies are religious. For our wide pur- pose, then, we may define religion as an inward attitude of reverent relationship to that which is thought of as for the time of supreme moment^ resulting in outward expressions^ OUR GENERAL ASSUMPTIONS 3 'personal and social, that form complexes of rites, beliefs, and customs. This definition is both vague and very- general. It must, in fact, be so if it is to include all the things which at one time or another we have called religious. And each one who reads it is likely to compare it with some one clear definite religious fact, which has become to his mind sym- bolic for all religious facts, and criticize it accordingly. But for the present we must be content with what is confessedly vague, in order not to exclude from our examina- tion things we distinctly feel have to do with religion. The moment we have so defined religion there can be no question as to the im- portance of its study. And this without any regard to the farther question as to how far there is any reality corresponding to that which a man thinks at the moment to be of supreme importance. This reli- gious attitude has played and still plays a prominent, if not the leading, part in human history. If one is asked to study any particular religion, many a cultivated man turns away at once from some feature 4 RELIGION AND LIFE that he regards as outgrown — it may be miracle or sin or redemption — but no cul- tivated man can really deny the historical importance of these and other religious concepts. They have, along with many other religious notions, made and unmade history. Mohammedanism may seem to any of us essentially false, but the faith of mil- lions in Mohammedanism remains a car- dinal fact in the politics of Europe. It has dominated the whole attitude of Europe toward the Balkan states, and plays an important part in the foreign policy of England. What may seem to us absurd and trivial in the extreme may become, with religious feeling behind it, of momen- tous import. What men and women link with their highest hopes and most real fears is never for them trivial or unimportant. The belief of the Sepoys in India that they had to touch with their lips the fat of cows and pigs as they bit off the ends of their greased cartridges is said to have been not one of the least causes of the Indian Mutiny. To us this may seem trivial, and we may wonder at the strong OUR GENERAL ASSUMPTIONS n !J prejudice against the fat of cows and pigs, but we should also try to understand the tremendous power that is behind this prejudice, and to comprehend the wonder- ful vitality of this force which, under the name of religion, has changed more than once the face of the world's civilization. It ought to seem inexcusable that any really scientific man should to-day ignore religion, no matter what he may think of the objective reality postulated in its forms. It surely is anomalous that one of the most brilliant writers on ethics should at- tempt to sketch its progress in Europe and forget to mention Christianity. Whatever may yet happen, the history of Europe is wrapped up, not only in religion, but in religious forms, and to-day no one can understand the rapid changes taking place in society without an intelligent under- standing of both the religious revolt going on, and of the strength of even evidently antiquated forms. Men enter, it is true, with much preju- dice to-day upon the study of any par- ticular religious party, for there are in all religious organizations many elements 6 RELIGION AND LIFE which seem to the modern mind patently outworn; and yet this very fact should be a reason for thoughtful and discriminating study. More than ever in a democracy is it needful to have men free from all gtoss superstitions, to have men and women clear-eyed as to causes and effects, and trained to reason from effects to causes. It is asserted that workingmen deal so much with machinery that they no longer are tempted to go to magic for an ex- planation of the unknown. But is the automatism of the machine a true picture of our highest life? Is there no reality to correspond to the sense of power and self- direction that makes a man feel himself more than a machine.'^ If the religious forms of to-day have no reality behind them, if the energy and life that is now found running in religious channels is wasted, then the sooner we know it the better. The Socialist party in Germany has abandoned official opposition to religion on the ground that it is a private and personal matter. This may be wise from a party standpoint, but, personally, the writer feels that no man has a right to OUR GENERAL ASSUMPTIONS 7 a simply negative attitude; either we are face to face with a vast delusion that holds back the race, or we are in contact with a mighty force which we need and the cause of progress needs. Even when we recognize most freely that superstition is mingled with nearly all existent religious cults and dogmas, the question remains. What gives these super- stitions power? And if we set about dis- placing the superstitions, we must raise the question. Are we giving anything in its place? A wooden leg is a poor substitute for one of bone and muscle, but to go about simply sawing off wooden legs would not be a helpful activity. Granting that superstition marks much of our religious usage, we should try to understand what this superstition stands for, and, seeing its place in human life, try to discover its function and its defects. It is a common attitude in France and Italy for men to say that religion is "good for the women," and while the men ignore it and its claims on them personally, they insist upon maintaining the forms for the sake of the "women and the children." 8 RELIGION AND LIFE Such an attitude cannot be long retained while women are daily asserting the essen- tial homogeneity of human life. Religion is either a force for all or for none. It is either true for men and women or false for men and women. The intelligent man of to-day must try, at least, to understand religion. One of the ablest of America's Western politicians failed utterly to attain his political ambi- tions because he entirely misunderstood the psychology of the religious community in which he worked. While one of the ele- ments that made up Lincoln's strength was his wonderfully clear comprehension of the religious feeling of the common man, and his power of appeal, in utterly undogmatic forms, to the religious feelings of his hearers. So that from any point of view the cul- tivated man to-day must try to under- stand this mighty force which is still building temples and churches, still laying the foundation for new cultures and new states, and which is still the theme upon which men ponder most deeply and most earnestly, and for which they will make OUR GENERAL ASSUMPTIONS 9 even greater sacrifices than for country and home. From time to time we hear it said that religion is dying out, or that this or that rehgion is passing, or that reason is taking the place of religion. Such statements have been made at all times, only to find them belied by some tremendous uprising such as the birth of Christianity itself, or the rise of Buddhism, or the religious awakening of the Reformation, or the Evangelical re- vival. Nor are there any conclusive evi- dences to-day that religion is less of a force than it ever was. At no time have all men been religious, any more than all men were musical. There is also a great difference in the way the religious life manifests its vitality. To a Roman of Cicero's time the doubts and negations of his day seemed, without any question, irre- ligious. We, looking back upon that age, realize that Vergil's Epic was a great re- ligious poem marking the rising wave of religious feeling, some of whose very ex- pressions were the persecutions of rival faiths. Nor is it doubtful that the Roman empire was in the midst of a great re- 10 RELIGION AND LIFE ligious and ethical revival, the best fruits of which were Stoicism, Cynicism, Epi- cureanism, Gnosticism, and at last the Roman Church. There come times in the history of the intellectual world when it seems as though a particular trend has at last reached definite victory; but the shout of triumph is hardly still before another wave leaves the school mourning its shattered idols. Not long ago a rather shallow materialism had seemingly taken final possession of the great upper middle class of England and this country, and just when it had seem- ingly become well-nigh hopeless to attempt a restatement of religion a great wave of transcendental idealism swept over the minds of men, and transformed their think- ing almost without their consciousness of the vast change that was taking place and religion came again to its own. Many times the passing of religious forms has been hailed by the critics of re- ligion as a final victory and bewailed by its friends as a last signal defeat, only to reveal the fact that defeated formality made way for larger life, and quickened OUR GENERAL ASSUMPTIONS 11 energies were taking the place of routine and stagnation. Even were we convinced that what we know as rehgion was being really de- throned, and other convictions were taking its place, we would still have to understand religion to understand the past; and his- tory would be a strange enigma to any man who had lost touch with the tre- mendous significance of religion for stormy human life. There is, however, no evi- dence that will stand investigation that religion is being displaced in modern life. True it is that old forms give way to new expressions, but as a mere force with which the historian or the statesman must reckon religious feeling is to-day as im- portant as it probably ever was in human history. To-day in England the leader- ship of the new liberal democracy is in the hands of men trained in the non- conformist churches. Nor can any thoughtful student of German social ad- vance fail to note a strange but great spiritual awakening which, amid many differing manifestations, has an underlying unity, and which, like great spiritual awak- 12 RELIGION AND LIFE enings before it, is born of the established state rehgion, but fails to be recognized by the parent church. It is only when the various forms under which religion has dis- played its energy are too closely identified with religion that it seems to many to be slipping away. Any inquiry into the character and func- tion of religion must, however, be upon the basis of some understanding of what we mean by the word "know." What are known in philosophy as the epistomo- logical questions must be faced. It is fashionable now to say of religion that we cannot "prove" the positions we hold. Here, however, it is for us to understand what we mean by "prove." It was once fashionable to speak of mathematical cer- tainty, and from Spinoza to Leibnitz the effort has constantly been made to reduce the proofs for the higher values of life to mathematical formulae. And in scholastic theology, whether in its most consummate form in the hands of Thomas Aquinas or in the mutilated and dismembered systems of Protestant imitators, the forms of syllo- gistic thinking have been assumed as OUR GENERAL ASSUMPTIONS 13 methods by which new truth apart from experience about God, the soul, and immor- taHty may be reached. This faith in mathematical certainty is based, however, upon a misconception — a common misconception — namely, that the elaborate science by which we hold to- gether and deal with material facts is a way of reaching truth apart from ex- perience. All mathematics demands is absolute self-consistency, and you may start with any set of definitions you may please. Our senses give us only three di- mensions; but if you choose to set out with four or five or x dimensions, you can build up a mathematics on that basis just as well. It is, in fact, a shorthand by which we sum up elaborate processes that would otherwise bafile us. It enables us to deal with vast ranges of experiences, like those of astronomy or bridge-building, which we could not manage without it. It helps us to great generalizations whose ulti- mate test, however, must again be ex- perience. The sureness of its results depends upon the accuracy with which we use the definitions and concepts and 14. RELIGION AND LIFE the exactness of our record of the ex- periences/ These abstractions far surpass our actual experiences. We postulate a perfect circle or a straight line, although we have never seen nor can ever make a perfect circle or a straight line. They remain abstract ideals, abstractions indeed from actual physical experiences, but transcending all individual particular experiences. And our place in the universe seems marked off as over against the animal creation by just this capacity for ideals whose reality is a matter, not of even possible demonstra- tion, but of fundamental faith in a reality ever becoming. To-day we have entered upon a new era of experimentation. We test our conclu- sions, and by a series of repetitions under known conditions establish the chain of conditions under which a particular effect ' At the same time this power of conceptual abstraction, which is the basis of language and logic, has value for life only in connection with our empiric experiences, and in and of itself can give ils no guarantee of the empiric existence of the relations it postulates. Thus a mathematical line is the shortest distance between two points, but we have no empiric experience of either a point or a Une, and mathematical abstraction can- not guarantee to us their emi)iric reality. This was the weakness of Anselm's position in hb controversy with Gannilo. OUR GENERAL ASSUMPTIONS 15 takes place. Out of the complexity of life we seek to separate happenings, and to bring these happenings into relationship with each other, and to fix the conditions under which certain happenings will always take place. Thus we know that hydrogen and oxygen may be mingled in certain pro- portions, and that if then an electric spark be passed through them they will combine and two colorless gases become fluid water, H,0. So sure are the results of certain experiments that we can generalize from these experiences, and these generaliza- tions we call laws. These generalizations may within limits be tested over and over again, until the universality and uni- formity of the "law" becomes a matter of relative certainty. If a new comet appears, the assumption will not be doubted by an intelligent man that it will act in a certain way according to its initial speed, its weight, and relation in space to other heavenly bodies. We say "we know" that H and O will combine to form water, and that attraction is in a certain ratio to the square of the distance. As once men sought to reduce religion 16 RELIGION AND LIFE and aesthetics and ethics and, indeed, all the higher values to mathematical formulae in the mistaken assurance that mathemati- cal science was a key to all knowledge, so to-day the modern scientific experimental method is openly proclaimed as the one gateway to knowledge. Moreover, this claim seems often justi- fied by the vast advances it has enabled us to make in the mastery of the world about us. It has helped us to understand our own mental processes and to measure the ma- terial world around us. It seems ungrate- ful to point out the limitations of a method to which we may be said to almost owe our modern world. Yet, in point of fact, the experimental method has extremely dis- tinct and trying limitations. Do what we will, the rudeness of our senses, the limits of the eye and ear, of taste and touch are so marked that even with all possible elimi- nation of the personal equation our approach to the facts must remain distinctly relative. And further, at best only a small part of our world of experience can ever be sub- jected to any exact experimental method. We cannot dogmatically say how far we OUR GENERAL ASSUMPTIONS 17 may yet succeed in extending the experi- mental method to regions that now may seem beyond its scope, for it would be a foolhardy thing to try to-day to fix the limits of experimental science or restrict its field. We, nevertheless, must realize that there are distinct limitations, and that even within these we must often be content with degrees of assurances ranging from the positive conviction that falling bodies in all space obey the laws that rule on the earth's surface, to the tentative acceptance of the somewhat doubtful hypothesis that the unit of matter is the electrical ion. These limitations are fixed by the fact of life's great complexity, and the fact that we can theoretically never repeat any experience. We can only attempt an ap- proximation. The conditions of a simple chemical experiment can, for all practical purposes, be exactly repeated; but as the complexity grows greater and greater we must trust to shrewd analogies and gen- eralizations on the basis of ever smaller areas of experimentation. We can never "know" that protection or free trade was good or bad for America after the war, for 18 RELIGION AND LIFE no experience can ever be repeated, and social experimentation can never repro- duce the conditions of any historical situation. Conclusive proof cannot be forthcoming. It will always be open to anyone to "prove" that Napoleon was a curse or blessing. We can never experi- ment with and without Napoleons under the same set of circumstances. The con- ditions of social equilibrium can never be exactly the same. If, therefore, one means by "scientific method" the experimental table of the laboratory, the limits are so well defined that most of life that is really worth while can never be tested by the "scientific" method. However, experimentation is only one feature of the really scientific method of to-day. What we really have which sep- arates us from the childhood of knowledge is some attempt at systematic generaliza- tions from observed experiences. We have improved the records of experience. We have learned to critically estimate all records, and in many ways have learned to eliminate errors by observation of aver- ages. We have improved our sense ex- OUR GENERAL ASSUMPTIONS 19 periences, by exact measurements, longer sight, stronger sight, and mechanical meth- ods of fixing experiences, as in the photo- graph, etc. We have more definite and more trustworthy records of the actual happenings, and so we can better describe or guess at the conditions of a particular event. Thus slowly, for instance, we are learning to forecast the weather by ob- servations of the conditions that have governed particular changes in the past, and although the complexity and the in- stability of the factors with which the experts deal are exceedingly great, we yet have firm faith that certain very definite laws underlie these manifold variations. As we watch these variations we are struck with the regularity of summer, autumn, winter, and spring, and notice how under all seeming change they yet succeed each other in a certain uniformity. This faith in uniformity can never be the result of an all-inclusive experience. Gravitation might cease to act in the same ratio of distance. Bichlorid of mercury might become a wholesome article of food. But, in actuality, a systematization of 20 RELIGION AND LIFE experiences far short of inclusiveness is suflBcient to convince us of the truth of our generaHzations. In fact, the danger is the other way. We are incHned to accept a generaHzation as true on far too small a range of experience. The great value of the experiment is the facility it gives for repeating under known conditions our experiences, and the as- surance that comes from experimentation, prediction, and fulfillment of the predic- tion is very great. iVt the same time the complexity and individual character of our higher values, and the subtle changes that take place below the range of our exactest observation, force on us the real crudeness of all our most scientific work. Take, for instance, the bafiling character of the finer appeals to our sense of taste. No one knows what are the subtle conditions that make certain wines agreeable to the trained palate. It depends, no doubt, upon slight but marked characteristics in the yeasts and fermentation processes, but no chem- istry can describe what the tongue in- stantly recognizes. The photographic plate in its exposure, development, and fixing OUR GENERAL ASSUMPTIONS 21 represents an elaborate and well-understood chemical history, but no science is exact enough to quite predict the curious indi- vidual characteristics that occasionally mark plates off from each other, though, as far as human skill can go, they are subjected to the same treatment. In other words, the splendid usefulness of the experimental method should not blind us to the fact that a vast range of ex- perience and assurance lies wholly beyond its scope. The demand, therefore, that our religious assurance rest upon the same plane with assurances born of the experi- mental laboratory, or that finally religion must stand the laboratory test, is one of the errors which, like the error in regard to mathematics, confuse us, not only in the realm of religion, but of nearly all the higher values and the more subtle and complex experiences. It is not that there is a sharp line drawn between "reason" and "faith," but simply that a vast range of life is in varied degree beyond the scope of certain well-defined and highly useful modes of thought, and that neither the method of mathematics. 22 RELIGION AND LIFE nor yet that of experimentation, does more than help us organize and control our experiences. We all have experiences and assurances quite beyond the reach of mathematical description or experimental test. The per- sonal judgments as to literature, art; the personal life in its complex affections and distastes; the psychic reactions whose com- plexity makes it impossible often to say whether one man is normal and another insane or not: all these judgments rest, not on some foundationless emotionalism, nor still less upon authority external to the experiencing mind, but upon a long his- torical, social, and individual experience that in its complexity and profundity baffles all complete analysis. It is this complexity that has led men to say of religion that it is a matter of emotional reaction, or deals with things that "can- not be proved." It is true that religion involves emotional reaction, but it also de- mands intelligence and appeals to the will. In fact, as in the case of all the higher and more complex values, its tests are the reaction of the whole personal life, and. OUR GENERAL ASSUMPTIONS 23 indeed, of the whole social life. Nor can it be "proved" in the same sense that we can check a balance sheet, or find out whether there is carbon dioxyde in the atmosphere, but neither can we "prove" the high value of Wagner's "Parsifal" or the ideal value of democracy. Not even the common con- sent of all the rest of mankind would convince some of us that despotism was a better form of government than democracy, but the way we approach the question as to the "truth" of democracy, that is, its real inward value, is exactly the method of approach for testing the truth or inner value of religion. A scientific method in examining reli- gion will therefore avail itself of all possible tests of truth. We will try to objectively study and weigh history, to master as far as possible the psychology of the religious reaction, to understand amid the com- plexity of its character the various ele- ments that constitute religion both in its inner life and its outward manifestations. And in judging religious values there can be but one final test, namely, their ethical out- come. Not, indeed, that religion is "sim- M RELIGION AND LIFE ply" ethics, or that ethics is the whole of religion, but because conduct and life are the only objective tests which can reveal to us the inner meaning of religious reac- tions. In the long run the ultimate test mankind will apply to the various religious forms and claims will be the outcome in personal and social character. And this test is being constantly made. The difficulty of applying this test is exceedingly great. All manner of elements enter into social and personal character — heredity, climate, economic level, class at- mosphere, political color, and other even more subtle factors; and yet, looking over the history of the race, it is certainly as yet impossible to point to any one factor of greater importance than the religious be- liefs and the religious reactions of history. A really scientific study of the fundamen- tals of religion must carry us far back into the early history of the race, for it is linked with the oldest chapters in man's long story. Evil elements mingle freely with the better things, and the student of re- ligion must be clear-eyed enough to search resolutely for the good, and brave enough OUR GENERAL ASSUMPTIONS 25 to recognize and reject the weaker and debasing part. Any inquiry into religion sooner or later will deal with two important phases of the question: first, What is the func- tion of religion as seen in its past history? and, secondly, What is the inner con- tent of religion as it may now have value for us? THE LITERATURE The first part of our discussion has dealt with our theory of knowledge, and the student who desires to go more thoroughly into this will have to begin with Hume's "Treatise of Human Nature," and go thence to the "Critique of Pure Reason," by Kant (Max Miiller's translation), and to Lotze's "Microcosmos" (English translation). Compare also with these J. S. Mill's "Logic" and Sigwart's "Logik" (German, in two volumes), Karl Pearson's "The Grammar of Science," and the literature there given. For the more special field of the philosophy of religion an admirable work is that of Hoeffding, "Philosophy of Religion" (English and German translations). Compare also Otto Pfleid- erer's Gififord Lectures on the "Philosophy and Development of Religion," 1894. A fine bibliog- raphy of the field up to the date of its publication 26 RELIGION AND LIFE is in Jastrow's excellent "Study of Religion." Too little known are the fine treatments in somewhat poetical form of the field by Fechner, "Die Tages- ansicht gegenueber der Nachtansicht" (compare especially pages 3 to 64. Only in German). Compare also Rudolph Eucken's "Problems of Human Life." CHAPTER II Primitive Religion The fruitless discussion as to whether any human tribes had no notion of a God had interest only as long as men still de- fended the existence of God on the ground of some universal tradition. But it is now fairly well established that some sort of religion has been the possession of man- kind from the earliest times, though how far linked with any notion of one personal being is another question, which is also of little importance. Nor is it safe with our present data to dogmatize on the origin of the religious beliefs. That dreams and ancestor-worship affect the forms of re- ligion may be easily granted, but Herbert Spencer's over-emphasis of these factors may be now admitted, and they certainly do not give us the origin of religion. Religion is essentially a certain attitude most characteristically called out in the presence of the mysterious, and the sudden change from life to death is the most mys- 27 28 RELIGION AND LIFE terious fact with which the thinking mind is early confronted. Its tragic meaning must force itself at times even upon the dullest and most indifferent of even very low grades of human intelligence. Nor is it possible for any of us to interpret life about us except in the terms and symbols borrowed from our own experience. That men, therefore, should dimly attribute to all objects, including animals, something of their own experienced psychic life was in- evitable, so that the animism of Comte and Tylor may be assumed as an almost uni- versal experience. Thus children strike the "naughty" tree against which they have hurt themselves, and savages thankfully worship the clouds that bring them the needed rain. On this basis religion may have grown and developed, but we are still as far as ever from a satisfactory analysis of the psychic attitude of reverend relationship to superior power, which in various degrees and under various forms marks human life at all the stages we can examine. The study of the religion of primitive men from watching existing savages labors PRIMITIVE RELIGION 29 under the disadvantage that we are ig- norant as to whether existing savages are degenerate survivals of higher cultures, which seems in some instances certainly to be the case, or whether they may not be cases of arrested development. In either case the picture of primitive religious man- kind drawn from savagery will be in- complete. At the same time it is possible broadly to sketch the religious attitude of earlier humanity. As Robertson Smith has made clear, it was essentially a group attitude. Unauthorized non-group religion became magic, and was generally soon con- demned and dreaded. The primitive reli- gion expressed itself in various cults and then became the fixed and stable elements, not only of the religious, but of the whole group life. The attitude toward certain objects and events becomes a special one. These objects and events, these times and places, become *' sacred." The two sides of this attitude are represented in modern discussions by words taken from the Poly- nesian, namely, mdna and taboo. Mdna is, on the whole, the positive, and tahoo the negative aspect of this sacredness; and the 80 RELIGION AND LIFE whole of savage life is more or less lived under the steady pressure of these con- ceptions. All important activities are dominated by the sense of mdna and taboo. There are life-giving energies, and there are sources of power open to human life when the mana conditions are fulfilled, and there are times and places, as well as objects, so sacred that they are taboo, and are either to be altogether avoided or to be met by the conditions of taboo. Thus the discovery of these conditions links religion with all knowledge, tradition, and custom. Primitive religion covers the whole of life. The hunt, the feast, the coming to maturity of the child, the coun- cil, the war, the movement from place to place are all conditioned by the ever- present mdna and taboo. The embodied traditions of the group in the aged or the chief, or, later on, in the priest, and hard- ened more or less in cult, ritual, and belief, controls the activity of the savage from infancy to death. He has no standards for truth other than the age of the tradi- tion or the universal acceptance of it by those about him. PRIMITIVE RELIGION 31 Thus it comes about that sooner or later the whole religious life is brought under a social type, and other personal relations to the unseen powers become limited to magic, sorcery, and witchcraft, which in varied degrees are then under suspicion, and in advanced group life are forbidden in the interest of the social bond; for religion reaches from the smallest group, founded either on kindred or industry, to encompass the larger and larger groups which become tribes and nations; and as it teaches these it becomes the bond which unites the nation's life. We see the process among the Seven Nations, or Indian Confederacy, and quite plainly in the Amphyctionic Council of the twelve Greek tribes about Delphi; and later the Union of the Hellenes in the peace and games of the Olympic feasts. This union in religion brings about per- secution of opposing cults, and particularly persecution of any divisive personal reli- gious practices. At the same time con- quered tribes bring in their gods and usages in some sort of subordination to the gods of the conquerors, and a Pan- 32 RELIGION AND LIFE theon arises with combinations of religious rites and cults. Thus the including of other religions enabled the Romans to hold a world together without too great a sur- render on the part of the conquered of their own national and religious life. This is a very vital use of the elasticity that polytheism gave. It enabled the con- queror to use the multitude of gods for a social purpose. Thus increasingly religion becomes the social bond. The outward forms of this primitive group religion will depend upon several factors. On the one hand, the cultural stage determines the character of the spirits worshiped. The forest tribe will worship tree-gods, the roving huntsman or pastoral nomad will have sacred places, but can hardly erect temples or carry about with him any elaborate idols or cumbersome apparatus of worship. The myths and rites of a fisher folk will reflect the needs and life of the worshiping tribe, and as mankind moves upward it carries with it the memory of various stages through which its life has passed. For the social significance of primitive religion as a PRIMITIVE RELIGION 35 bond of union presupposes a certain con- servative character. Thus rehgious rites preserve the stone knife for sacrifice long after metal has taken the place of stone in all other activities of life. The real meaning of some religious usage is often entirely lost, but the usage persists afid exerts a peculiar fascination because linked with the memories of so many generations. Thus when the tribal fire was all im- portant, because if it went out savagery had no means of reproducing it, it became a religious function to maintain the fire, and we have vestal virgins, or the eternal fire upon the altar of Christian churches, although the real significance has been altogether forgotten. The presence of the mysterious cycle of the seasons soon impresses mankind; and even if Frazer exaggerates somewhat the universal season myths in their significance for religion, and often puts the cart before the horse, yet it is his distinguished service to have pointed out the wide prevalence of such an underlying current of feeling. The stage of culture must, however, be some- what advanced. Myths are more generally, 34 RELIGION AND LIFE perhaps, attempted explanations of cus- toms whose real significance has been for- gotten than the foundation of religious rites and cults. But the cycle of the sea- sons had early significance for the race, whether hunting or fishing or engaged in primitive agriculture. Moreover, the re- turn of the seasons has ever something ir- regular and mysterious about it, and the mind of primitive man was perhaps even more impressed by this irregular and strange character than even by the regular cycle that underlies all the minor irregu- larities. These were, however, the occasion of returning rites and ceremonies. The hopes of spring and the joys of autumn are linked with myth and story and celebrated in religious dancing and feasting. Then, also, religion tries to control the seasons and to temper the heat of summer and the cold of winter, to induce rain to fall and increase the f ruitfulness of the earth. In an ever-increas- ing measure men began to observe the forces of nature and to identify them with the divine power or powers by which man felt his life surrounded, and upon which, in his weakness, he felt himself dependent. PRIMITIVE RELIGION 35 When, then, a Pantheon arises through the amalgamation of tribes, however brought about, it is easy to see how the tribe of greatest strength should give the leading god in the Pantheon. Nor is it difficult to see how the other gods should assume functions linked with the various activities of the other assimilated tribes. Thus as the Greeks take over Astarte from the seafaring Phoenicians, she rises from the sea and becomes with Poseidon one of a cycle by which a roving inland tribe recognizes a change in habit as the Greeks become, in part at least, a sea- faring people. These vegetative and astronomical cycles are linked with man's earliest attempts at systematic knowledge, for it becomes in- cumbent upon the tribal group to under- stand the mind and will of the powers upon which it depends. Thus astronomy rises out of astrology and religious rites attend all the increasingly complicated ac- tivities of agriculture. In the most primi- tive mythologies we have history, philos- ophy, and science blended together in rude unorganized beginnings. Science is 36 RELIGION AND LIFE man's experience organized, and systema- tized, and constantly subjected to critical tests to eliminate error in generalization and to build up farther hypothetical postu- lates for the farther systematization. The rude beginnings of this process are seen in the fable, story, and myth of early religion. Here, again, Hesiod, Homer, the Vedic hymns, and parts of the Old Testament represent an exceedingly advanced stage of this process. But in all of these books we see the primitive material which represents much more simple strata of thought. The most primitive cosmogony is still an attempt at systematic knowledge. The element of wild speculation is overwhelm- ing and observation is rude and uncritical, yet both elements are there, and must always be present in any attempt at constructive thinking. It may seem a long way from the weird mythologies that cluster about the round of spring and autumn or the astronomical cycle, to the work of Darwin and Helmholz, but the interests are not so far apart. Under both is the overwhelming longing to know and to master our world through knowledge. PRIMITIVE RELIGION 87 The rude beginnings of all science are found in the attempted cosmogonies with which nearly all advanced religions begin. Thus also art, architecture, music, the dance, all bear the marks of the religious character of all activity at a certain stage of human life. The temple, as the house of the god, gives the largest and grandest forms which the tribal mind can create and furnishes room for development; and, in turn, down to our own day marks, as in the colonial style, the more imposing pri- vate dwellings. Music in both its rhythm and harmony reflects in most interesting details its development from religious chants and processional marches. The slow beat of the Gregorian chant echoes in the music dramas of Wagner, while the wild religious dances of southern lands may still in mystic sensuousness be heard in the operas of Italy. Nor is it otherwise with painting, poetry, and oratory; all bear the traces of the tribal religious life in which they were nurtured, and to which they still minister even if in other ways and different measure. That intelligent men should therefore 38 RELIGION AND LIFE neglect the study of the significance of rehgion, or misinterpret it in the way so often fashionable, is a bar to any real understanding of man's past, which has been steeped in religious faiths, hopes, and fears, so far as we can see, from the dawn of human intelligence. THE LITERATURE Admirable is still Tylor's "Primitive Culture." Compare with this Frazier's "Golden Bough" and Robertson Smith's "Religion of the Semites." See also Morgan's "Ancient Society." In Herbert Spencer's "Synthetic Philosophy" much data are given, to be used, however, with care. Collin's "Epitome" is an authorized guide to the phi- losophy. For the special study of Greek Religion see Mahaffy's books, and particularly his "History of Classical Literature." But especially consult Rhode's "Psyche" (German, 1907) and his chapter in the second volume of "Kleine Schriften" on "Die Religion der Griechen" (German, 1902). Also "Kultur der Gegenwart" Teil I, Abteilung viii, pages 1 to 290. For primitive mentality, compare Franz Boaz's "The Mind of Primitive Man." CHAPTER III The Twofold Interest It may be assumed that the opinion once widely popular that religions are the invention of power-loving priests needs no elaborate refutation. The priest is, in fact, a rather late product of religious organization, and reveals in his great va- riety of character the uncertainty of his origin, for religious organization is itself late, and its beginnings are often exceed- ingly difficult to satisfactorily trace. The early forms of organization are tribal or national, and any differentiation between a natural group and a religious group may be taken at once as proof of an elabo- rate culture and an advanced life. But there are distinctly two types of religious interest which mingle indeed one with another in the most strange com- binations, but are apparent the moment religion emerges from the most simple and undeveloped form to anything like an organized whole. 39 40 RELIGION AND LIFE These two interests may perhaps best be treated as the priestly interest and the prophetic interest. However much they blend and mingle, and however diflScult it may be from time to time to separate them in a stream full of eddies and cross currents, it is, nevertheless, apparent in any general view that these two interests are not only often quite distinct, but even at times mutually hostile. Nor is it possible to say that one is older or more fundamental than the other. Both interests are found present as soon as anything that can be called religion at all can be observed. And both interests per- sist as long as religion persists. The stage of development differs, of course, most widely. The priestly interest does not develop a priestly caste or even a distinct priestly function until quite late. And often at all stages of culture we find both interests represented in the activities of one man or set of men. Then, again, at any time one interest may so dominate as to almost entirely obscure the other. More especially is this the case when the priestly interest has a highly developed life, and THE TWOFOLD INTEREST 41 finds that life seemingly threatened by the fervors of the prophetic interest. It is, therefore, of very real importance to get a clear conception of the two interests, and to sympathetically consider the deeper sig- nificance they possess. The priestly interest represents in large measure the continuity of the tribal re- ligious tradition, or, indeed, as all tradi- tions are more or less linked with religion, the continuity of the tribal life. And the historical importance of this con- tinuity needs no argument. The little child so long as the cortex of the brain is undevoloped in its texture is weary in a few minutes of any sustained activity. The little one will run all day if healthy and well fed, but a steady walk of an hour or two will tire the undeveloped child as eight hours' running and jumping "on the impulse of the moment" will not do. The undeveloped man is in some respects like the child at this point. Continuity and fixedness of purpose, the power of steady, dogged following up of a social or tribal plan, is conspicuously lacking. And here the priestly interest in a steady and con* 42 RELIGION AND LIFE tinuous tradition has a social and political significance of the very first character. It is a powerfully cohesive force that not only binds the group together, but binds generations to generations, thus giving sta- bility and rigidity to the group purpose as it is passed from one age to another. This is intensely interesting in its merely bio- logical effect. Other factors enter in, no doubt, but a priestly religious interest has historically been linked with the most persistent group traditions we know. Thus, for instance, Judaism, without geographical boundaries, without unity of actual spoken dialect, with but doubtful racial unity, has survived on the basis of a rigid priestly group tradition centering about the syna- gogue and organized in the law and the commentaries gathered about the law, while civilizations that for the moment seemed vastly more favorably situated for survival have gone down in the shocks of struggle for existence and overlordship. The conservative function of the priestly interest is seen in the mass of traditions of all kinds about which it throws the char- acter of "sacredness," and thus saves them THE TWOFOLD INTEREST 43 amid the wandering miscellaneousness of a primitive or undeveloped intelligence. The literature called the Talmud represents on a very high plane what on much lower levels of intelligence and culture the priestly interest is constantly doing. Thus in Egypt and Babylon rise great priestly states on the basis of a group tradition that conserves the life and fixes the pur- pose of the tribe or nation. Thus also in China the priestly religious interest throws about the family and the ancestral mem- ory a sacredness that renders the life rigid and tenacious to an extent still the marvel of every observer. One of the obvious effects of this priestly interest is an element of order and sequence which it brings into the life. Life is sur- rounded by ritual and cult. The wander- ing attention is trained to greater automatic precision. The destructive individualisms of an immature group life are controlled by the bonds of an inherited order, and when family discipline in the narrower sense ceases the group tradition takes up the task of ordering the individual life. This process has many sides, but no one aspect 44 RELIGION AND LIFE is of greater importance than the religious priestly tradition. So, for instance, nearly all that is highest and noblest in Greek art was worked out under the influence of a religious tradition that handed down as * 'sacred" the body of experience gained in Egypt and in Crete during the long periods of the Minoan and Mycenaean ages. No other interest has had anything like the conserving force of this priestly interest. It is, of course, often uncritical, but the experiences thus uncritically conserved form in nearly every instance the groundwork upon which historical science must build. Practically all primitive traditions are re- ligious traditions, and practically all primi- tive literature and all early documents have been conserved to us by the priestly religious interest. Moreover, the ordering of the rhythm of the personal and group life has been largely the work of this priestly religious interest. In the animal stage of life this rhythm is controlled by the outward forces of nature. Spring and summer, autumn and winter determine together with night and day the main rhythms of the less developed crea- THE TWOFOLD INTEREST 45 tures. As man advances in his mastery over the forces of nature he is exposed to dangers of irregularity and excess which are impossible to animals in the bonds of external forces. He can warm himself in winter and preserve food; he can light the night and greatly extend his area of wan- dering. It was therefore a service of first- rate importance when the priestly reli- gious tradition flung over the rhythm of the personal life the character of "sacred- ness" and began to control the life by giving it internal motives to regularity. Thus puberty, marriage, childbirth, ad- vancement in rank, and funeral rites, all are ordered by the religious tradition and surrounded by cult acts expressive of this sacredness. And even the day is divided by hours of prayer, by sacrificial prayers at meals, and by religious interruptions of one kind and another. In nones and ves- pers, the Mohammedan calls to prayers, the evangelical family prayers and grace before meat, as well as the Sundays and Sabbaths with their ordered religious ex- ercises, we see this priestly instinct still striving to introduce, often to its great ad- 46 RELIGION AND LIFE vantage, a routine and steadiness into life. And this order and routine it stamps with its sacredness and thus gives it a place no other motive has been strong enough to give it in the life of the individual. The same influence orders the life of the group. Festivals and religious days, cere- monial repetitions all divide and control the primitive group life, and give it in cult and ritual the steadiness of outward regu- lation maintained by inner motives of assent. The misapprehension is widespread that religion is the child of fear. It is no more the child of fear than the child of joy. Fear has its place. The gods of other groups are feared and hated. But the god of the group is a protector and friend. The religion of early mankind is full of joy and feasting. Dancing, music, and elabo- rate decoration express the joyous excite- ment of special religious occasions. Even the worship of Astarte and Aphrodite, that seems to us in many ways revolting and irreligious, was originally the consecration to religion of the highest joy of the senses which man could feel. The mingling of THE TWOFOLD INTEREST 47 fear with reverence and worship is natural, but it is, on the other hand, quite re- markable how religious joy is the marked feature of so much primitive religious life. All the earlier Jewish feasts were ones of joy and triumph. Christmas, Easter, and the harvest festivals have their place in analogous customs in all primitive reli- gions, and are all feasts of joy and thanksgiving. It is also exceedingly important to study the place the priestly religious tradition has in the educational system. Down to our own day the character of "sacredness" has never been wholly taken away from edu- cation. The Mohammedan university is still a religious school. The Jewish edu- cation is still linked with the synagogue and sacred books. The modern university has all manner of reminders still of its former character as a place where the priestly tradition raised up priestly leaders and studied and organized the cult and the religious ritual of the group life. Primitive education consisted largely in the preparation for and initiation into the separate activities of life. To this day 48 RELIGION AND LIFE education ends in some climax, "gradua- tion," or "degree." In all the initiation ceremonies the priestly religious tradition is present, imparting sacredness to the process and heightening its significance by its recognition. The earliest documents are directly the work of priests, the earliest writings are the "hieroglyphic" or priestly writings, and far down into the Middle Ages of our own era the only ones who could write were the "clerics." WTien, therefore, anyone wanted to learn, he had to go to the priestly tradition for instruc- tion, and generally in some way gain its recognition before being generally con- sidered as being "learned." This wonderful social service of the priestly religious tradi- tion is now often ignored or misrepresented, because at a certain stage priestly con- servatism may lead to the hardening of the tradition into a lifeless form, thus inter- fering with intellectual progress. But the fact that the priestly interest over- functions should not blind us to the fact that to it we owe the conservation of nearly all our educational traditions. It has conserved many useless and even THE TWOFOLD INTEREST 49 harmful things, but without it we should have had very little to conserve. This priestly interest in education has often degenerated into a selfish and obstructive ecclesiasticism; at the same time it is exceedingly ill-informed and unsympathetic criticism that cannot distinguish between the two elements in the historical de- velopment. The conservation of man's slow ac- quirements from generation to generation, the gradual formation of a code of morals, the transmission of noble and refining tra- ditions, the stern suppression of unsocial individualism has been the function almost wholly of this priestly interest in the past, flinging the mantle of sacredness over the group life in its more stable forms. It is true that on low levels of culture etiquette, that is, the ceremonial, relationships quite apart from any inward moral attitude form the main interest. Outward correctness is the leading emphasis, and with minute care the priestly interest seeks to establish and maintain outward conformity to the body of teachings which is passed down from generation to generation. 50 RELIGION AND LIFE This body of etiquette is older than any systematic formulation of ethics. Only later does the moral attitude arise out of these ceremonial conformities, and though the conceptions of "ought" and "ought not" have baffled us in final analysis, it is easy to see that morality arose on the basis of priestly prohibitions. This or that was taboo, and the categorical imperative was in its earliest form a strong "Thou shalt not!" The child not only has no organized system of inhibitions, it has almost no place for inward inhibitions. These must come first from without. "Don't do that!" is the constant cry to the growing little one. By investing these inhibitions T^dth sacredness the priestly interest tends stead- ily to render the life of child or group autonomous. The inhibition becomes an inward one, the recoil from certain lines of conduct becomes a second nature. It is true that it is a superficial analysis that jumps from these "habits" to moral- ity, as though from unmoral habits morality must proceed. At the same time we have, undoubtedly, the basis for the outward foundation of morality, and fail THE TWOFOLD INTEREST 51 only to be able to satisfactorily trace the moral will to the unmoral mechanism. Thus, to borrow a term from another science, the priestly interest represents the anabolic^ element in the group life. And herein lies its danger when in the group life this priestly interest overf unctions. And this overfunctioning is, unfortu- nately, a common phenomenon. By ne- cessity the priestly function is exercised by those with some claim to authority. The father or the mother, the older son or the clever and retentive mind within the group becomes established as the traditional source of religious authority. The func- tion of such authority, being mainly to conserve the past, becomes sacro-sanct. All innovation becomes easily an attack upon the sacredness of the tribal life. Conservation becomes the end rather than a means to an end, and a deathlike rigidity may take the place of life and movement. Examples are seen in China and Egypt 'The physiologist speaks of the metabolia of the cell with its two as- pects, that of catabilis, or breaking down of the cell tissue, and the build- ing up, or anabolic conserving process due to the blood flow. Compare Professor Max Verworn's article, "Physiology," in the Encyclopsedia Britannica, eleventh edition. 52 RELIGION AND LIFE and in the Levitical development of the Old Testament. Moreover, the attention is mainly ar- rested by the outward and the formal. Outward conformity is more demanded than any inward life, and thus the priestly interest values detail and minute con- formity as evidences of real religious in- terest, and legalism and formalism soon curse the whole religiosity fostered by the priestly interest when left unbalanced. To maintain this conformity authority is needed, and the priestly interest grasps easily after power, and readily becomes an autocratic and aristocratic leadership. Or, to maintain the old ways and traditions, it is wont to court the forces that have also an interest in the maintenance of the status quo; thus it becomes, not only tyrannical, but, alas, often the protector of tyranny under the guise of religious conservatism, and with an honest interest simply in the maintenance of things as they are. Practically all developed priest- hoods, wherever they are found, whether in primitive religion or in modern Protes- tantism, are toiy and reactionary, for THE TWOFOLD INTEREST 53 conservation has been the function of the priestly interest so long that it almost inevitably overfunctions, and thus brings upon religion the reproach of being non- progressive and antagonistic to new cur- rents of feeling, thought, and action. For the same reason the priestly interest is nearly always afraid. It is forever timid in the midst of life's unceasing change. Rightly it sees that mere change is not always for the better, and readily it be- lieves that therefore all change is for the worse. It clings with at times pathetic and at times provoking tenacity to quite unimportant and long-lost positions, and every new movement in the world's life seems dangerous just because it is new. The dangers that beset its ethics are formality, externality, and narrowness of vision. Large interests are overborne by small but intense affections for detail. Stagnation and hypocrisy are the constant reproaches that may be brought against it. And as these things flourish in the last stages of any era dominated by an or- ganized priestly interest, the real services of the past — its great organizing power, its 54 RELIGION AND LIFE faithful conservation of great traditions, its leadership in education, and its advo- cacy of order and morality — are apt to be forgotten in the impatience and anger with which at last it is almost sure to be swept away by a tide of life it is too weak to withstand and too old and senile to enter upon anew. True it is that the priestly interest is likely to be formulated in a caste in only late periods of culture, though sometimes it exists very strongly entrenched but with a comparatively weak development of the priest as such, as we see in China. Again, it may become so identified with a trium- phant ruling class, as in India, that the distinctively religious interest is almost forgotten. And everywhere it has to con- tend, not only with the forces of dis- integration, but also with those of progress, and it is itself subject to great divisions because it is so difficult to hold traditions unchanged, and yet each difference is likely to call out the priestly zeal to its special maintenance. When also this interest does form a caste it is likely to be arrogant and mas- THE TWOFOLD INTEREST 55 terful to the point of the loss of all really religious influence, because it asserts itself in the place of the gods, and then no trickery or imposture has been too base to maintain the caste. Hence priestly trick- ery disgraces the religious development of nearly all lands where it has successfully grasped after power, and the feeling that the end justifies the means, and that evil may be done that good may come, has often clouded the services of this type of religious leadership. THE LITERATURE For the literature here see the general literature dealing with the priestly and prophetic elements in the Old Testament, as, for instance. Driver's "Introduction to the Old Testament," or Cornill's "The Prophets of the Old Testament." Compare also Kuenen's "National ReUgion and World Re- Ugion." See also the articles in the Encyclopedia Biblica, and in Hastings's Bible Dictionary on "Prophet" and "Priest." For criticism, see the really unbalanced attack by Draper in his "History of the Conflict between Religion and Science" and the far saner book by Andrew D. White, "The Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom." Compare also the altitude of Herbert Spencer. CHAPTER IV The Prophetic Interest As far back as we can go we find linked with the priestly interest another and different spirit in the religious leadership of the race. Like the priestly interest, it is rather in the beginning an emphasis in the religious life than an interest apart. Moreover, it is even less likely than the priestly interest to formulate itself in a class or caste. Its history leads us back into the same world of undifferentiated groping after the meaning of life and death. For convenience we call this in- terest the prophetic type. The beginnings are very lowly. Fundamentally, it is rooted in the faith men have in the ab- normal insight of specially gifted fellow men. This prophetic insight in later stages may be heightened or superinduced by various means; and these means link its life at several points to the priestly in- terest. Nevertheless, it is often at odds with the more static priestly leadership. 56 THE PROPHETIC INTEREST 57 Drugs, dances, music, and all the primi- tive approaches to hypnotism and auto- suggestion play at one stage or another a marked role in the prophetic type of re- ligious development. Thus it happens that so far as these things are under the control of the priestly interest the pro- phetic is often merged in the priestly or springs out of it. Thus the prophet of the Old Testa- ment in the early stages is a dancing dervish, who dances before the ark, and the "priests" of Baal dance, cry, and cut themselves with knives in the effort to control divinity. Soon, however, the exceptional and abnormal character of the prophet separates him from the priestly interest, and, to again borrow a phrase from another science, his catabolic ten- dency reveals itself. For the prophetic interest is apt to be intensely individual. The superior insight makes the prophet a being apart. He is to some degree normally at war with the existing situation, and sees beyond the present to the next step to be taken. So that even when he proclaims the past as an ideal to be regained, it is an 58 RELIGION AND LIFE idealized past and is in reality a new and unexperienced situation. The priestly and prophetic interests may be emphases in the same human life, or even in religious classes and castes, but the prophetic interest is then almost sure to be swallowed up in the more conserva- tive and static life. The monastic de- velopment has always been essentially pro- phetic in its origin, but soon passes from this progressive and critical stage to ac- ceptance of what is substantially a priestly routine and sinks to the level of the static priestliness. The great services of the prophet lie along the line of his religious genius. He it is that formulates the new message, and when it has been accepted and become the rule of the group it is generally forgotten how novel the message was. Confucius was essentially a prophet, but Confucianism has become to the last degree priestly. His function is, however, in the first instance disruptive. He is independent and aggressive. Thus he is always hailed as a destroyer of religion, and, like Socrates or Jesus, denounced by the established priest- THE PROPHETIC INTEREST 59 liness as a corrupter of the people, and more particularly of the young; for to them the prophet surely turns. The ex- pert, whether in music or religion or in art, is constantly bringing everything to the judgment bar of his formulated expert knowledge. The new message does not fit his rules, and so must be wrong, and he is tone-deaf to it or hardly listens. So to the young and the common people, whose very ignorance protects them from these expert prejudices, the prophet has generally to turn. It is not simply the Beckmessers and the pedants who are among the prophet's critics; the wise and balanced fear the new because they have seen so much cheap falseness parade as new redemption. The stability of the group, and the need for definite starting-points for any inquiry, makes the experienced man overcautious and even timid. And false prophets are quite as common as dead priests. The danger lies on the surface. By the very nature of his func- tion the prophet is exposed to all sorts of shipwreck. The vision that gives him his power is so vivid and so novel that all the 60 RELIGION AND LIFE present is dark and under condemnation. The prophet is critical and destructive, and generally indiscriminate and onesided. He almost compels opposition, and then is driven by the opposition into still more marked onesidedness. His general estimate of both the past and the present is un- historical. He is apt to idealize the past and see the present only in darkest colors. This unhistorical attitude leads to an under- valuation of discriminating history, and he would destroy the present institution to make way for the new construction. His experience is so vivid, his vision so clear, that he forgets that outsiders seek, and ought to seek, some way of judging of the vision and correcting the results by other experiences. To all these must be added the fact that the prophetic aspect in the history of re- ligion has been linked with genius and insanity, and that often only the future can decide whether the claims of genius are divine egotism or blank insanity. This is true of the prophetic messages in art, in music, or in literature. A humble unself- conscious prophet is well-nigh a psj^chologi- THE PROPHETIC INTEREST 61 cal impossibility, and sometimes even his- tory has difficulty in deciding whether a Swedenborg and a Nietzsche are prophets or insane, and in rightly estimating the line where genius ends and insanity begins. The prophet may gather about him groups of followers, and soon his vision may be translated by others into organi- zations, but he himself is likely to be an intense and somewhat lonely individualist; and the supreme prophet must dwell much apart. His very function is the revelation of a new individuality, and the exhibition of a new and startling personality at its best and highest. He has to train first a group and then a generation to understand him. So much alone is he that even his nearest followers misjudge and misinter- pret him. Francis of Assisi had hardly gone to his grave before all he really stood for was denied in his name by those he had himself trained. Thus it happens that every great movement, so far as it has had the personal element in it, results in a second growth which seems almost like a caricature. The Reformation was succeeded by a theology that bore its 62 RELIGION AND LIFE name, but had neither the Reformation spirit nor its life. Indeed, the supreme prophet can never be wholly expressed in any relatively static and priestly organiza- tion. Jesus Christ is more than Chris- tianity, Luther better worth while than Lutheranism. Buddha still outtops Bud- dhism. For the prophet is a revealer and the organization conserves as best it may but the remembrance of the revelation. At the same time we would know noth- ing to speak of concerning the prophet if the revelation were not dynamic in an or- ganization. Thus the two emphases in the religious life complete each other, and are never wholly separate. Both must take their place in the lifting of life into real sacredness, and flinging about the ex- periences of time the mantle of eternity. Nay, in all religious life both elements should normally have a place. He who has never known the emotional, uplifting power of a new religious experience can hardly have really put his religious life to any test. From time to time even the humblest and most obscure of those of us who make no claims to aught but the THE PROPHETIC INTEREST 63 average human experience have had special approaches to the infinite mystery, and have felt the new power of special insight into duty, and far promise of things good. Yet while this is so, the greater part of our religious life must be spent in the simple, helpful routine of priestly refresh- ment and instruction. We go over the same things that helped us before; we engage with our fellows in the routine of religious exercise and find comfort and pleasure in it as we find comfort and joy in the rest of the familiar routine of life. How good and refreshing is the familiar simplicity and even dullness of home life after the novelty and excitement of a fascinating journey! We could never really endure a life in tents with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration. We must go down from it to find the light of common day, amid the other stupid followers and captious critics of the Master. There is comfort in finding our own ordinary, com- monplace level, even after a prophet has taken us up into the vision. We cannot live by visions alone; they must be trans- formed into the sober realities of everyday 64 RELIGION AND LIFE life, and that life must incarnate the vision if we are not to be constantly betrayed by a fata morgana that entices us away from all reality to find ourselves at last lost amid the bitter disappointments of the mirage. No task is more delicate than that of trying the spirits whether they be of God or no. Temperament, training, self-interest, inertia, restlessness, conceit are predispos- ing causes to many false judgments, and once we have committed ourselves to the wrong side it generally takes some vision on the way to Damascus to break through the blind, obstinate zeal and reach the better manhood. Nor can we wholly trust the guides to whom we naturally turn. Institutional re- ligion has been too often mistaken to take the judgments of our natural mentors without examination. Institutional reli- gion rejected Wesley, Calvin, Luther, Sa- vonarola, not to speak of Paul and Jesus. Nevertheless, many false prophets are gone out into the world, and keep saying, "Lo, here!" or "Lo, there!" Our mistakes have sometimes an intellectual reason — we sim- THE PROPHETIC INTEREST 65 ply lacked clear vision. Sometimes they rest upon emotional or aesthetic misjudg- ments — we have been unable to weigh rightly the elements of taste and propor- tion. But the dangerous grounds for our failures to hear the Divine voice amid the confusions and Babel of sounds are our moral limitations. We are selfishly in- terested in some way in the maintenance of the old, and summon to our aid all the arguments we can gather to refute the prophet and drive him out of the religious or other circle in which he demands a hearing. The final test is, of course, the outcome in life. By their fruits we shall know them; but only exceedingly open-eyed and generous minds can save us in the day when the prophet comes to our Bethel and points us to a better and nobler way. THE LITERATURE The study of prophetism can best be carried on in connection with the Old Testament, where it reached its highest organized point. Consult the volume in Kent's "Students' Old Testament" deal- 66 RELIGION AND LIFE ing with the prophets and their WTitings, Compare also the articles before mentioned on "Prophet" in the "Encyclopaedia Biblica" and in Hastings's "Bible Dictionary." Compare also C. H. Cornill's "Der israelitische Prophetismus" (3d Edition, Ger- man and English translation). Also the sections on "Prophetism" in H. P. Smith's "Old Testa- ment History." CHAPTER V Creative Ide.\lism and Life The dispute between determinism and free will depends upon the assumption that a point of view mentally necessary for certain purposes can be therefore asserted as universally true. Whether we admit it or not, we are all determinists when we set out to know, because to know means the mastery of the conditions that resulted in the event we are investigating. That is to say, we really know anything only when we know it in its conditioning relations. We do "know" when we have discovered and exhaustively examined the conditions under which any event happened and would happen again if the conditions were reproduced. Our mastery over the world and life is made possible, so far as we possess it, by knowledge of the conditions which determine all activity and conduct. There are no single conditions, and there are no single results, so that when we even speak of the "main cause" we really 67 68 RELIGION AND LIFE only mean main cause from our point of view, because if anything is a condition at all, it is a necessary condition. If a man is killed on the street, the doctor says the "reason" he died was a fracture of the skull, the coroner's jury says the "reason" he died was because a person unknown struck him. The friends say the "cause" of his death was the lawless character of the town. The murderer says in his heart, "The ^reason' I killed him was my wanting his money." In the enormous complexity of life only very simple happenings can be even rela- tively reproduced. Even our finest science is but a rude instrument. The trained tea taster can with his tongue detect differences no chemistry can establish, and when we rise in the complexities of questions of taste no instruments of precision can do anything more than give us data for our personal judgments and decisions. We seek the "causes" or conditions and weigh them according to our main purpose. Moreover, the world we live in is each day and each hour a new world. Evolu- tion has to be taken seriously; and when CREATIVE IDEALISM 69 we do so take it we realize that it is a growing world and that growth means novelty. Whatever life is as a form of energy, it is certainly the transformation process by which in the breaking down of special forms other and even more highly specialized forms result. These are new. Moreover, our knowledge, resting as it does upon experience (compare page 12), has as one of its most fundamental ex- periences that of our own creative activity in the world process. Of course this may be a delusion; but if so, then all experience may be delusion. It is open to the Indian metaphysician to maintain this attitude, but we are constantly reestablishing our faith in this creative efficiency by actually making the world we live in. And no man is so caught in the superficial fallacy of a mechanical determinism that he really can treat himself and other men as superior kinds of elaborate machines wholly conditioned by the ponderable elements of life. Now, among the most evident conditions upon which the new world we will live in to-morrow will depend are the ideals of 70 RELIGION AND LIFE to-day. These have a history. They are not ex nihilo, but they are again condi- tioned by our own activity. We "praise" or "blame" the creative element in the personality that is an essential element in any idealism, and no analysis can be so keen as to trace the exact share the ideal has had in the world process, or to isolate from the ideal conditions out of which a creative ideal sprang the essential novelty. Yet it is patently there. Wagner did not create ex nihilo his symphonic harmonies, but it is a different world since Wagner created "Siegfried," and the glory of Ra- phael's Madonna can never be dissolved into photographic reproductions of living people and a scale of color learned from Perugino. He has created an indefinable something that has made the whole world of pictorial art new. Great creative per- sonalities of this kind are, however, only typical and illustrative of our own more common experiences. The world we five in is not made up simply of the elements we find; it is made of the us and the ele- ments we find. In fact, our real life con- sists in the clothing our ideals with what CREATIVE IDEALISM 71 we call material fact. And the real differ- ence between daydreams and ideals con- sists in this creative character. That this creative character is within limits goes without saying. Our increasing mastery over our environment, and our increasing understanding of the part we are called upon to play, never lifts us out of the conditions under which alone our activity has any meaning. Nay, our whole mastery over the external world depends upon our knowledge of its conditional existence and our own realization of our conditioned mental life. This, however, not only does not make the picture of a complicated, well- oiled, and well-cared-for engine an ade- quate symbol of our life, but it excludes it. The engine maker has clothed his ideal, as nearly as he may, in steel and copper and iron, but he has not implanted in it his own creative idealism. Religion has invested this creative ideal- ism in all ages with peculiar sacredness. The ideals of the individual and the ideals of a group are the really essential facts in human life, and religion has always re- garded the ideal as the place where the 72 RELIGION AND LIP^E divine breaks through and touches human hfe. In the prophetic ecstasy or in the stately ceremonial ritual the conditions are given for this contact with the power or powers upon which man feels his essen- tial dependence. Under all the varied and ofttimes strange and even revolting sym- bolism of religion there speaks this faith in man that he is in some way linked with, and responsible to, a higher unseen world, which is the source and home of those ideals he strives himself to find and per- fect, and in turn to work into the fabric of the process of life. From the primitive animism of man in savage simplicity to the lofty idealism of Plato or the transcendentalism of Kant human life has never been without its wit- nesses to this tremendous faith, nor has this faith ever failed to justify its reality by recreating and transforming men and the world. In the whole range of human experience no force has been more patently in evidence in the affairs of man than this abiding faith. Even when the attempt to formulate this faith either in a religion or a philosophy or a rule of conduct fails to CREATIVE IDEALISM 73 wholly meet the inevitable test of farther experience and new demands, the faith it- self survives the wreck of the formulation, and goes again to work at new formulation. Religion has always taught men under one form or another that they are coopera- tive creative agencies with the powers that are unseen. Whatever else totemism is or is not, it marks the emphasis man put upon the connection of his higher life with a world of spirits beyond him and cooperat- ing with him. For it is important to re- member that religion never exhausts itself in the thought of dependence (as Schleier- macher's theory taught), but always in- cludes the thought of sharing life with the god and cooperating with him. Thus in the formation of an ideal the thought of the unseen power, however named or symbolized, has always accom- panied man. The natural expression has been a tribal god, or a god of the group, who guards, inspires, and struggles with and for the group. The infinite attributes with which the reflections of highly de- veloped religion invest the conception of God do not belong to this lower stage of 74 RELIGION AND LIFE simple primitive acceptance in naive man- ner of the tribal god as friend and helper. He is powerful to help, and willing to do battle for the group that is faithful to him. In general, his sway has geographical limits. The home of the group is his home. Je- hovah is for Israel the God who brought them out of the land of Egj^pt, and the other gods the Israelitish tribes or phratries are not to worship because he is a jealous God. He becomes the guardian and cham- pion of the life of the tribe in all its aspects. Thus from the beginning God is the guar- antee of the ideals of a humanity that is ever creating a new world of moral and religious emotion, and generation after generation of men have felt the cooperation of powers not their own in the formation of these ideals and the translation of them into life and conduct. The two phases of this process of giving ideals to the group are the conservation of the past gains, and the reinterpretation of these in the light of farther experience. Thus the priestly function guards the ideals of the past. In them the priest feels that he has access to the creative life. The CREATIVE IDEALISM 75 school, the church, the academy, the poH- tical following all are bent upon the main- tenance of their several traditions, and in them see the ideal life set forth. God is working in these institutions and caring for the ideal life, which is in all its aspects, whether artistic, literary, moral, or reli- gious, the goal of the true man. Selfishness, and especially subtle forms of class selfishness, easily make these con- servative forces the mere ignoble instru- ments of their narrower purpose. At the same time it is unjust and unhistorical to overlook the fact that it is in these insti- tutional and essentially conservative ways of thinking that the creative ideals of the individual and the group are handed down. The ideal must clothe itself with material fact. The artistic instinct must find ex- pression in beautiful form or tone, and the new creative religious ideal must express itself in fellowships and sacraments, in buildings and new codes of worship and conduct. In the undifferentiated life all ideals are essentially religious. Painting is worship or the handmaid of worship. Music is communion with the Unseen. The 76 RELIGION AND LIFE architect builds the habitation of the Most High. The scholar communes with the Eternal in a sacred tongue handed down as infallible tradition and divinely given poetry. The sacredness and high signifi- cance of these outward forms increase as age justifies their usefulness. Rightly men come to feel that he who has no reverence for the past and no sympathetic insight into its future significance, has little claim to understand the present and little power to rightly create a future. In the history of the past all men may find real contact with the unseen reality, and may come into vital relationship with its creative ideals. And in such contacts we may ourselves gain the creative power to reconstruct in cooperation with our generation the life that lies around us. Thus the classic forms of Greece and the religious inspirations of the Jewish prophets are always awakening men anew to the ideal life, and kindling again in them new hopes and new aspira- tions. For all men who are really at work at all feel themselves creatively at work. They may be only intending to build again the new generation in the likeness of the CREATIVE IDEALISM 77 old; they may simply desire to create again forms like those of the honored past. But the most conservative and confident priest of the ideal life in any of its unnumbered ministries is eagerly at work rebuilding his day and generation in the likeness of his ideal wherever he may have found it. And in doing this even the most eagerly conservative spirit, who thinks he finds the whole of truth in the great traditions of a past art or an historic religion, but who goes about his task of lovingly restating the content of that life, becomes, according to the measure of his success, a new creative element, a distinct factor in the inevitably new world of his to-morrow. And in like manner he who most intelli- gently feels himself the bearer of a new message to mankind marks his dependence upon the past. With something like im- patience Jesus pointed to past prophecy as the source from which his critics also could learn the truths he taught. Wagner felt himself the logical outcome of Beet- hoven's rebellion against uncreative musi- cal monotony. At the same time we lesser ones feel 78 RELIGION AND LIFE ourselves brought by genius into touch with eternal reality, and see in the genuine prophetic ecstasy a breaking through into our world of material fact of a new creative energy, and speak of the prophet, whether in art or in religion, as inspired. We easily recognize the fact that this inspiration has its degrees and its ranges; that it is marked by its purpose as of a higher or a lower scale of value to human life. The word "divine" may be used to cover the genius of a Shakespeare or the inflatus of Isaiah. What marks them both to us as of su- perior mold is the fact that their work is revelation. What gives the higher value to the religious prophet in contrast to the artist or the litterateur is that he speaks to us of God, while they speak to us of a human life, and that our daily experience leads us to cry out after that revelation of God in whom all our ideals seem to have their source and guarantee. The function of the prophet in all ages has been the proclamation of a new crea- tive ideal. Our first impulse is, therefore, always to stone him, because he can re- create our ideals only by, in a measure, de- CREATIVE IDEALISM 79 stroying and superseding past ideals. We are exceeding loath to part with these precious ideals of the past, and just in pro- portion as the prophet's revelation is new it seems diflScult to in any way harmonize the claims of the new and the old. Yet in the long run the new ideal works its way into life and actually creates an environ- ment in which it settles down and lives, and we then build the tombs of the men who gave us the new ideals, and real- ize that once more we were slaying the prophets and stoning them that were sent unto us. Nothing marks genius so emphatically as this quality of revelation. Genius, whether in the region of art, literature, music, or religion, is not merely a capacity for taking pains or a gift of hard work. These things seem to exist sometimes almost to the ex- clusion of genius. The prophetic genius is inspired. He sees and knows what we do not see or know until he reveals it to us, and on its highest reaches we feel at once that flesh and blood have not revealed these things either to him or to us, but that God has spoken; that the Infinite has 80 KELIGION AND LIFE touched creatively again a plastic life, and is forming and reforming it. Moreover, our ears are dull, our senses heavy, and the vision of the prophet may easily seem to us a wild and silly tale. We have also been stupidly foolish from time to time in our acceptance of disordered fancy for heavenly revelation. Hence we rather gladly escape if we can the painful process of readjustments of our inner life. Children, and not the wise, the babes and the simple, rather than teachers and ex- perts, must be the prophet's pupils, until his creative vision has formed a new world in which men then live, unconscious often of the birth pangs when the Spirit brooded again upon the face of the deep, and dark- ness gave way to light. Great are the prophets' risks. Self- deception seems quite as common as de- liberate quackery, and once upon the pathway of prophetic leadership, self- deception may play a role even in the lives of superior genius, and a prophetic soul like that of Savonarola may end in a great and heart-breaking catastrophe. Or the inspiration may seem to fail, and in CREATIVE IDEALISM 81 desperation means are sought to heighten the hfe and restore the vision. Early religious leadership sought to superinduce by drugs, by fastings, by wild fantastic dances, or by self-inflicted wounds the vision and the rapture, and so secure con- tact with the eternal. How far these superinduced trances and visions have ac- tually affected the really creative ideals of mankind and actually led the way up to larger and fuller life is a question in which religious prejudice would, at present, be so concerned that an objective estimate is made very difficult. All that can be said with certainty is that the trend of human experience is away from such visions and raptures, and that deep distrust of them animates the intelligent leaders of religious thought in Hinduism, Mohammedanism, and both branches of Christianity, while Judaism has never been prone to these excesses. THE LITERATURE For this discussion the books that may prove most suggestive are perhaps William James's "Will to Believe" and "Pragmatism," Bradley's "Ap- 82 RELIGION AND LIFE pearances and Reality," Bergson's "Creative Evolu- tion," Royce's "The World and the Individual." Compare -^-ith these the basal works of Kant and Lotze and Fechner already mentioned. In Kant and Fechner many of the positions of the most modern philosophy are foreshadowed or plainly set forth. CHAPTER VI Religion and Mastery of the Material World The religious ideals of mankind sooner or later always attempt some material ex- pression. The endeavor is soon made to clothe the religious ideal with material fact. Jacob has his dream, and erects an altar to be a permanent place of access to the Unseen and Invisible. Weapons are con- secrated to the use of the god, the tribe seeks to organize its life after the religious ideal handed down from generation to generation, but with steadily increasing evolution. Thus when at last stable con- ditions are reached the temple becomes the center of the group life, and mastery over the various materials at man's disposal is sought, that the temple may be resplendent and impressive. In this way the mastery over the material world is separated in good measure from immediate utility, and is linked as an end with ideal aims and much less obvious advantages than warmth 83 84 RELIGION AND LIFE and protection. The temple becomes the center of education in a manifold way. All writing seems originally to have been linked with religious records. The temples become the archives of the group, and the homes of the learned and the wise. Amid all the trickery and deception that soon clusters about a priestly caste and a de- veloped temple life, it is plain that prac- tically nothing has so advanced man's mastery over the material world as this sacred learning and it abundantly justifies their existence. They have all been very far from ideal, and in the late stages of hardened traditionalism have been even hindrances to progress, but the thoughtful man must be set to wonder what progress we would have had at all without them. Those who often uncritically glorify pagan- ism, and are inclined to take a negative attitude to religion in its name, would do well to remember that all the paganism we know, and particularly Greek paganism, was religious through and through. Greek art has, in fact, its highest significance in its religious character. The mastery of the external world of stone and wood and clay RELIGION AND MASTERY 85 was gained first and foremost in the name of that world beyond ruled by the gods, and giving background and content to the thinking of Greece. It is easy to forget how desperately poor the worlds of Greece and Rome, of Baby- lon and Egypt were. The struggle for home and food for the vast majority cost all the energy they had. Only some great ideal could hold them to the extra effort needed to build noble buildings and splen- did marble piles. And the sacred buildings of antiquity were not the product of simple imperial whim. The grinding taxation and the fearful cost could be met only in the interest of what was nationally important. Not even national defense could seemingly call out the sacrifice religion exacted with relative ease. Nor do these sacrifices be- come less as the basis of the ruling class becomes broader. The limited democra- cies of Greece, Rome, and the Free Cities outstrip the imperialisms of the past in the rapidity of their progress and in the prodigality of their expenditure for ideal ends. Nor was it otherwise when a larger 86 RELIGION AND LIFE world made impossible the conditions both political and intellectual that obtained in Hellenism. The so-called decline and fall of the Roman empire has been too narrowly interpreted. The lamentations of a class have been mistaken for the tribulations of the people. In fact, it is doubtful whether the mass of men within the Roman world were not vastly better off in most of the days of so-called decline than at the time of the undisputed domination of the im- perial oligarchy. What the decline and fall really meant was the bankruptcy of a slave-holding aristocratic oligarchy because it was an ineflScient economic form of human organization. The world passed from the hands of this militarj^ aristocracy to a freedman class, whose more efficient productive methods made them the natural heirs of the well-nigh exhausted heritage. Here, again, the one force that was strong enough to hold that class together and give it a sufficient unity of purpose to beat back invasion from the North and East, and enough vitality to reconquer and recon- struct its material environment, was Chris- tianity. It is to this Christianized RELIGION AND MASTERY 87 freedman class that the world owes the preservation of Hellenistic culture, and the reordering in the spirit of Roman law of the occidental world. It would be un- grateful to forget the contribution of Arabic scholarship, and the services of the syna- gogue, but these also were religious in their main interest, and illustrate only the more clearly the profound influence of religion in giving men ideals of a creative character, and bidding them obtain mastery over their material world. All the guilds of the Middle Ages were in the beginning religious organizations, and the arts and crafts rose under the inspira- tion of great cathedrals, whose influence was reflected in domestic architecture, and in the nobler attempts to express life in the rebellious media of oak and stone. Home adornment is a relatively recent develop- ment. The cathedral and church, the monastery and chapel gave the lines along which the palaces of kings and the homes of the wealthy were later adorned. All art is practically the outcome of men trying to express their religious ideals. And this is the case everywhere, in Greece and in 88 RELIGION AND LIFE Rome, in Egypt or Babylon, in India or Mexico. The battle men have fought with their material environment, making stone shel- ter them, and wood obey their behests, and compelling clay and canvas to give back life, has been fought in largest part under the inspirations and enthusiasms of reli- gion, so that when men tell us they have found a substitute for religion or that these inspirations and enthusiasms have no objective basis in fact, it certainly makes us anxious for our civilization, lest the sub- stitute prove futile and the real force be lost. It has not been the only incentive. Love, hunger and cold, military necessity and mere prying curiosity are factors of no mean value in man's progress upward, but of all the factors we may name no one is comparable for a moment, as a mere mat- ter of history, with religious enthusiasm for the incarnation of religious ideals. The great obstacle to progress is inertia. Only great excitement can at times overcome this, and for its steady overcoming only some great ideal enthusiasm can be really counted upon. No one enthusiasm has had RELIGION AND MASTERY 89 the enduring, steady, pushing force from generation to generation exhibited by the reHgious ideal. Hence nearly all the per- manent monuments of past ages that de- manded steady struggle with brick and stone to give them character are religious. So it is in the Middle Ages and up to our own day. Only the most shallow and superficial philosophy of history can in the face of the facts trace man's progress toward com- plete mastery of his world to individual selfishness. The hold of the group upon life, the heightening of individual desire by social contact, the almost complete subor- dination of the individual desire to the group ideal are now commonplaces of the classroom of psychology, and these group ideals which have for uncounted ages held men to their task of winning a material world have always been touched and generally formed by religion. The conquest of the great Northwest as traced in the fascinating pages of a Parkman, or the winning of a foothold on the bleak New England shores, was the direct out- come of social religious enthusiasms, and 90 RELIGION AND LIFE however much modern material advance may seem in some of its most important phases to be now independent of religious life, it will be well for the historian to pause and ask himself more seriously than some seem inclined to do, what is still the relationship between the creative ideals of the present and the religious enthusiasms that are covering the land with churches, hospitals, colleges, social settlements, and philanthropic centers ; for to-day, as always, the religious ideal is expressing itself in material fact. When mechanical material- ism seemed at the height of its fashion. Christian Science spread as a kind of visible protest a network of churches all over the land, calling out in a generation more actual embodied human effort in buildings and books than naked material- ism has to its credit in three centuries. To the task of mastery of this material world some ideal of categorical imperative insistence is needed. It would be absurd to try and link this ideal in every case with the dogmatic content of some religious be- lief. No sensible man would make such a claim, but to trace the actual religious RELIGION AND MASTERY 91 elements in the ideals which have moved men to such real mastery is a revelation of the power the religious ideal still exerts in a thousand ways hidden from the ordinary and superficial onlooker. Indeed, the un- fortunate identification of the religious en- thusiasm with its dogmatic content has blinded men to the real issues and often led them astray in their analysis of a situation. Our material world is still but indiffer- ently mastered. We are still engaged in a fight for subsistence and safety. Almost nothing so hinders us in our struggle as mutual suspicion and selfishness. We are flinging away a vast percentage of our energy in watching each other to keep some from stealing. We waste our re- sources in useless military provision for absurd assaults. Neither science, nor com- merce, nor self-interest suggests any remedy. Is it not time to inquire whether there is any ideal enthusiasm suflSciently world- wide in its reach and sufficiently imperative in its insistence that will give men pause in the predatory life, and call them more effectively to the task of mastery of the 92 RELIGION AND LIFE material world, to clothe this ideal with material fact? In past ages religious enthusiasm has bound men together as no other interest has succeeded in doing. The bitterness of religious wars is a result of this power of cohesion. Nothing but religious zeal, how- ever misdirected, would have held men together through the long struggles of the Mohammedan wars, the Crusades, and the Thirty Years' War in Europe. And the question must be raised and answered, Is there any force that can possibly take its place? The nobler world religions all profess international unity and peace. Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity, and Judaism, the Mother of Christianity, are cosmopolitan in faith and fact. All teach loving regard for all others, and all have in varied degree the missionary and helpful spirit. The world to-day is now most desperately in need of international peace. Vast changes have come over our lives. We struggle now with a new outlook upon all life, and are on the eve of readjustments of human relations that will tax our ma- terial resources as never before. Are we RELIGION AND MASTERY 93 going to continue throwing away nearly half of our national revenues on purposes fundamentally anti-social? And have not a world-wide religious reawakening and a world-wide religious federation some place in our thought and hope? THE LITERATURE The works of Ruskin may open our eyes to some of the relations of religion to art. The relations of religion to early Babylonian civilization may be studied in Professor Jastrow's admirable "Religion of Babylon and Assyria" (the enlarged form, Ger- man, 1904). For Egypt, see Breasted's "History of Egypt" and "History of the Ancient Egyptians," Ernan's "Religion of the Egyptians" (German and English translation). For the guilds of the Middle Ages, see Gross's "The Gild Merchant," two volumes, 1890, and Chapters V and VI of Kropot- kin's "Mutual Aid" (1903). CHAPTER VII Religion and Society In spite of the great work already done in trying to clear up the questions con- nected with tribal organization much re- mains as yet most puzzling. One thing, however, stands out clearly, and that is that the whole early organization of human life was controlled by an elaborate religious system. Wherever we turn we find the marriage customs under a most stringent system of taboo. No other force seems able to prevent the various relations between the sexes that experience, no doubt, had proved disastrous. All over the world re- ligion fhngs its character of sacredness over the degrees of relationship within which marriage takes place; and in Greek tragedy no guilt is blacker and no breach of law so horrible as to offend against the mar- riage taboo even unwittingly. This religious social control extends also to the other family relationships. Duty to parents, the obedience of children, the relationships of 94 RELIGION AND SOCIETY 95 blood, with the obHgations of blood re- venge and the duties of confraternity, all receive the high sanction of religion. The Old Testament bears witness to what are now seen to be a custom of primi- tive people everywhere. There is, as in the story of Cain and Abel, a limit to blood revenge within the brotherly group. The "Sword Song" illustrates the farther limi- tation under religious sanction of the blood revenge. The sacrilege of taboo is wit- nessed to by the story of Abraham in Egypt. Isaac must seek a wife of a certain gens, and so all through the earlier docu- ments we see the steady march of the group to national life under the religious enthusiasm of leaders who are the "called of God." But this is not exceptional. Whether in Mexico or Alaska, in India or in Egypt, we see the same phenomena. The reverence before the religious taboo, the horror that sacrilege inspires, the fearsome shrinking from disobedience to divine command chasten and soften and regulate the relationships between man and man, and gradually between group and group. Indeed, where groups do not have 96 RELIGION AND LIFE the same god there can be no natural ethical relationship, and there must be substituted a formal legal agreement. All intergroup relationships have, therefore, on into our own day an artificial and legal character. Only that is wrong which is forbidden in the treaty document. There is some reason for believing that the origin of all written law is thus a treaty arrange- ment, that the "tables" of both Roman and Jewish law date from the intergroup ethics that needed a written sanction where the "blood" sanction was becoming dim. Here, again, it is religion that lends its sanction to the written law. Every court bears witness in its forms and oaths to the exceedingly fundamental character of this sanction. All early trials were the tri- bunals of God. Between equals God is alone the arbiter, and mortal combat was the earliest w^ay of discovering his decision. Always lot and sign and omen give some clue to his righteous will, and in all cases he was the final arbiter. Since the Reformation among European nations the thought of religion as the ex- RELIGION AND SOCIETY 97 elusive group bond has more or less passed away. We still speak of "Christian" na- tions, and conserve state churches, and many outward forms of a past religious life; but even in countries predominantly Roman Catholic the older conception of a priestly state is really gone. Not even in Spain does it survive as more than a shadow of the former faith. Hence it is easy to raise the question whether religion has not fulfilled its function, and now hands over its work to other and more modern interests. The separation of church and state seems only a question of time even in those lands where it has been most inter- woven with the national thinking and the social life. At the same time religion has never been coextensive with ecclesiasti- cism. On the contrary, as our discussion has shown, the function of a priestly church almost inevitably brings it sooner or later into conflict with religion on its prophetic revelationary side. The con- servative instinct of the ecclesiastical for- mulation of religion must, almost of necessity, attach itself to the social order 98 RELIGION AND LIFE out of which it sprang. Hence the truth that nations are repudiating the national churches only marks the fact that since the Reformation human history has seen the rise and relative decline of several social orders, and, indeed, that any na- tional church has survived the changes that have gone on since 1648, 1793, 1832, and 1848, not to speak of such crises as our own in 1865, only emphasizes the truth that no ecclesiastical organization is so wholly encased in priestly tradition as to lose entirely the prophetic elasticity which enables it to readapt itself to a changing order. The national churches have, without being always conscious of the fact, changed their message and char- acter with the growth of the new national life. This is the significance of the High, Low% and Broad church parties in England, of the Old, Mediating, and Modern theolo- gies of the Lutheran Church in Germany, and of Modernism in the Roman Catholic communion. There is absolutely no evidence to show that religion to-day has less of a hold over human life than in its past history, and RELIGION AND SOCIETY 99 when anyone asks where are the moral and ideal elements of any national life to be found, the answer of any unbiased ob- server will still have to be, not exclusively, but yet predominantly in the organized churches. The obedience in the past of the indi- vidual to the group religion by no means proves all the individuals were in any sense religious. Formal acceptance of the group life simply included this conformity. So to-day American citizenship includes a conformity to many usages that in no way reflect or affect the inner life of the indi- vidual. The breaking down of uniformity in the manner of living and thinking within national groups is due to many causes, and acceptance of some form of organized re- ligious life signifies a deliberate choice and an overcoming of inertia that renders church membership to-day a very different and more significant thing than it once was. It is always hard to trace successfully the complicated conditions of national life and action, but no one can deny that to-day moral ideals are an increasing factor in 100 RELIGION AND LIFE national action everywhere; that men are swayed in their purposes by moral incite- ment as perhaps never before. It is true that the inhibitions of a keen intellectual analysis are felt at times as perhaps was once not the case, and waves of uncon- trolled hysteria, although not by any means excluded, are at least increasingly unlikely. But we must not measure reli- gion as a force by its climactic emotional periods. The hysterical movements that marked the period of the Crusades do not in anj^ way prove that that age was in reality more religious than calmer times in human thought; and to-day, when rational analysis tends constantly to check free emotional self-expression, not only religion, but also art and poetry, find less emotional, but no less real, ways of interpreting life. Robert Browning is unthinkable at an earlier date than the end of the nineteenth century, and it may well be that intellectual analysis will give WRy in a near future to less rationalized expressions. Then again religion and art will control human conduct by touching it once more mainly on the side of feeling and affection. To-day, how- RELIGION AND SOCIETY 101 ever, much religious pressure wholly es- capes notice because it acts on the intel- lectual rather than the emotional life, and is only to be recognized as a part in a creative ideal that expresses itself almost entirely in action or a theory of action. This is only to say that a man's real religion enters vitally into his working faith. And we no longer call that religion which consists simply in conformity to a group life, as once men in effect did. In other words, to-day we call real religion only that which actually sways a man's con- duct, whereas once much passed for religion which consisted in being swayed by group habit or emotion. Thus religion means a far more personal and unanalyzable factor in life to-day than ever before. Attendance upon mass or synagogue, upon church or chapel in no way now stamps a man as in reality religious. He may or may not be religious, and we try to watch his conduct, and value any professions he may make by their outcome there. If, therefore, we are to decide the ques- tion as to how far religion still affects men's relations with one another, we must 102 RELIGION AND LIFE try to examine the ideals that are recreat- ing the world from day to day. Then we must ask how far anything like vital reli- gion is an element in these ideals. Such a task is in its many details far too large a one for these pages. Only one or two things can be pointed out. In the first place, in the transformation of the Oriental world, and of China and Japan, the ideals that are at work are those of Occidental culture. Many elements in that culture impress the less advanced nations. One, of course, is the sheer brute strength of our military organization. Another is our com- mercial and industrial efficiency. Then they are being evidently stirred by our relative democracy and political inde- pendence, but not least is the religious education which is connected directly with an intense religious propaganda. Of this propaganda the ordinary man outside the organized church life has as vague ideas as the Roman literati had of the spread of Christianity; but not even our boasted commerce makes as intense and venture- some efforts at winning these worlds as Christianity. It has a vitality that ex- RELIGION AND SOCIETY 103 presses itself in missions, hospitals, schools, monasteries, convents, and churches all over the East, and in a thousand ways is undermining the old pagan world and making ready the soil for the vast changes evidently impending. As a mere evidence of the tremendous force that religion repre- sents in the lives of modern men the story of missions is of great scientific value, for it must be remembered that although mis- sions are as old as Christianity, the over- whelming and world-wide organization, with its intense life and emphasis upon education, is completely modern, and has an effectiveness, and consequent character, comparable to nothing of the same kind in history. Over great areas of life these missionary efforts are in many ways modi- fying even the religions which oppose them most, and compel a rival zeal and higher and higher moral standards. Buddhism in Japan may not disappear, but to hold its own against the impact of Roman Catholic and Protestant missions it must take on new life and must minister with increasing effectiveness to the reli- gious needs of Japan. The missionary or- 104 RELIGION AND LIFE ganizations are signs of something — some force great enough to compel men to give their lives in increasing numbers to the work of religious propaganda, and great enough to organize a rapidly increasing machinery to maintain this army in the field. If religion is a vast illusion, it is one that shows no signs at present of abate- ment, but, rather, is manifesting its vi- tality in a way even more striking and dramatic than in the time of Mohammed or the Crusades. Nor are there any signs that a general scientific intelligence is taking the place of religion in the lives of men. This ex- pectation was at one time the general atti- tude of a certain type of thoughtful mind. A wave of most undeniably useful agnos- ticism swept the intellectual world about the middle of the nineteenth century, as a similar wave of dogmatic rationalism swept the thought of the early eighteenth century. These movements led to reinvestigation of almost every accepted position. Nothing was regarded as settled, and we still live in this atmosphere of intellectual hesita- tion. Mathematical "certainty" has be- RELIGION AND SOCIETY 105 come a beautiful art of definition; history, the personal interpretation of facts; chem- istry, a marvelous structure built upon an hypothesis of atomic structure no man can demonstrate to be true; phj^sics, a splendid creation resting on a brilliant guess that electric ions are the final substratum of extension in space. And yet this intel- lectual agnosticism, whether in science or religion, whether it deals with the author- ship of the fourth Gospel, or the very personal history of Jesus, or the question whether mind is matter, or matter is mind, has not proved a weight upon the activity of our life. On the contrary, at no time in man's history has he gone with such triumphant confidence forward to do and to reconstruct in all spheres of life as he has under the spell of these seemingly so crippling conclusions. The general hypothesis of an evolution and a survival of the fit has raised all manner of ultimate questions such as "Who are the fit.''" Are simply the brutally strong the "fit," or shall, indeed, the meek inherit the earth? Whence are we moving in the stream of evolution? 106 RELIGION AND LIFE What is "progress" if there be no goal? And amid all these questions men see more clearly than ever that religious faith in a higher life, a nobler manhood, a diviner ideal, a more wondrous vision of reality is one of the persistent facts that survive all intellectual hesitation and all philo- sophic doubt. In the field of religion, as in all other fields, the test of truth has become the vitalizing power of the faith to accomplish, to strengthen, to quicken moral activity, to sustain and comfort, to direct and inspire. And one note of to-day is that men are bound together by a bond of unwavering fidelity to intel- lectual sincerity rather than by bonds of conformity to a definite group type. Many of the associations of men are no longer avowedly religious, whose inner spirit and whose leaders are more definitely com- mitted to religious ideals than even in the days when every trade guild was an avowedly religious organization. Thus, for example, the social settlement movement would have no such place in men's lives to-day were it definitely committed to any form of dogmatic religion, but it could not RELIGION AND SOCIETY 107 live for a month were it to be deprived of the support of religious idealism. Can any man imagine the life of the community suddenly deprived of the re- ligious idealism incarnate in the churches? It may often be misdirected — what human energy is not often misdirected? It may often be far less than one might wish — where does any reality meet our nobler expectation? But what it means year in and year out cannot possibly be expressed in even the really astonishing statistics of the United States census. As in all time, so now, religion watches over man's rela- tions to his fellow man, and is slowly and constantly transforming and remolding them as a force that no one has ever properly and justly estimated in its rela- tions to the other formative forces in mean's upward struggle. THE LITERATURE This chapter suggests questions raised by Kidd in his "Social Evolution," and compare also Drum- mond's "Ascent of Man"; and for foreign missions as a social force see Dennis's "Centennial Survey of Foreign Missions" and Carroll's "Religious Census of the United States." CHAPTER VIII Types of Religious Development In the previous chapters we had often occasion to speak of the prophetic and priestly type in the religious development, but there are other lines of more particular distinction between types of religion on its distinctly personal side which must be considered in any attempt to estimate re- ligion in its relation to life. Since re- ligion must be regarded as a reaction of the whole personality, and fundamentally an attitude of the real self toward what is regarded as the actually highest ideal, these types will be determined, in the last analysis, by some emphasis in that reac- tion. It will be convenient to classify these emphases under the three main as- pects of the life of the soul. There are the prevalently emotional types of religious life, with two main expressions of that emotional life, the aesthetic and the mystic — each seeking order and harmony in self- expression, but one predominantly in the 108 RELIGIOUS TYPES 109 outer life, and the other in the inner ex- perience. Then there are also the intellectual types. These too have a twofold classifica- tion. The intellectual interest may be dogmatic; seeking rest in some final and unquestioned authority found in an in- tellectually satisfying system. The in- terest in this mental rest is a somewhat complex thing, but the note is always the same. Another intellectual type restlessly seeks its satisfaction in speculation, al- though here, again", the interest in the speculation is often varied. Now, lastly, there is a distinctly prag- matic, or "action," type of religious de- velopment. In this case the activity in which the religious life finds its main ex- pression may be either, again, predomi- nantly emotion, unreflecting activity, or an exceedingly unemotional and highly re- flective type of activity. Personality is so complex that it is impossible to get more than approximately pure types of these various religious developments. The changes in great personalities are many and confusing; the differences of circum- 110 RELIGION AND LIFE stance may seem to bring out an entirely new side in the same religious biography. The broad-minded pastor becomes a nar- row-minded bishop, or the thoughtful, tolerant student an intolerant traditional administrator. At the same time, even underlying such changes, some emphasis is almost always a marked one in the great religious characters of history. And any really useful study of religion must be a more or less objective examination of its actual outcome in human life. Emotional types of religious life have made so deep an impress on men's minds that a superficial student of historical re- ligion easily falls into the mistake of as- suming that religion is wholly emotional. Even Schleiermacher was disposed to call religion the feeling of dependence, and to minimize the intellectual and pragmatic elements. This is false psychology. There can be no emotional reaction without in- tellectual and pragmatic elements; and when it is once recognized that the religious reaction has all three elements as necessary constituent parts it becomes evident that it is a matter of emphasis and that emotion RELIGIOUS TYPES 111 is far from being always the main emphasis in the reaction. However, it is true that religion is strongly emotional because religion is the most fundamental and powerful impulse in human life, not even the sexual being more important, for it persists long after the sexual impulse has lost its primary place, and it has been able to inhibit and regulate the sexual life as no other impulse has been able to do. Now, all impulses, to have power, must heighten the emotional life, and so religion has concerned itself in all ages with the various emotional expres- sions. It is at this point, indeed, that the close and often confusing relation between the sexual and religious impulses must be studied. The suggestion that the essence of the religious impulse is submission, and that this is also central in the sexual life on one side, will not bear examination. Religion is not predominantly submissive, and the central thing in the sexual life is not submission either. Religion is in large chapters of its life almost brutally masculine. Judaism, Mo- hammedanism, Brahmanism, Puritanism, 112 RELIGION AND LIFE Confucianism are intensely masculine and virile religions, whose very fault is that they fail duly to minister to great impera- tive needs of a race rising in refinement, and so all have produced counterpoises, such as Christianity, mystic sects, Bud- dhism, evangelicalism, and other gentler types of teaching. The emotional religious life has sought expression, as was natural, in forms of art. It links itself so readily and so completely with such expressions that it is often difficult, or even impossible, for the wor- shiper to know whether what moves him in the cathedral, in the music, the appeal of words, and the beauty of the ritual is aesthetic sensuous enjoyment or the stirring of the religious impulse. Hence there has frequently arisen a kind of jealousy on the part of religion of art, as in a sense a rival and coclaimant for the soul. Judaism sup- pressed painting and sculpture and Mo- hammedanism followed the same desert impulse in its emphasis upon a sterner ritual. Puritanism has carried on the same war. But when this has happened the religious life has simply chosen other RELIGIOUS TYPES 113 forms of art such as poetry, or language, or architecture, and thus emotional religion has poured out its longings in psalm or music, in splendid ritual or ornate mosque, for the aesthetic religious temperament when religiously stirred must respond along the lines of its inner nature, and to sup- press the longing completely would be simple suicide. It is equally irrational to expect all to enter into the highly developed sesthetical religious expressions with any great zeal. Even highly emotional persons have often an extremely primitive sestheti- cal development. Wildly emotional life among African Negroes finds expression in the most primitive rhythmic dances, whereas in some cases over refinement will make it impossible for some religious life to find any adequate expression in art of its deeper life. Whatever other elements there are in aesthetic enjoyment, one distinguishing fea- ture is the resolute demand for the harmony of the separate factors of the situation. The materials of the building, its lines and spaces, must express unity and harmony and satisfy us by their suggesting a unify- 114 RELIGION AND LIFE ing of the various discords. In music a simple taste is gratified by a suggestion of pleasing tones in some simply repeated melody. More highly sophisticated musi- cal tastes must find the disharmonies built up into elaborate unities that seem dis- harmony to the simpler mind. It takes study and long careful analysis for anyone but a musical expert to find the unity and harmony of one of Max Reger's pro- ductions. The emotional religious type demands harmony and unity made visible and real. It finds inspiration and comfort and fellow- ship with God in the order and beauty of cathedral service or great painting of re- ligious devotional import, or in the music of Bach and Beethoven in their most re- ligious moods. It was simply inevitable that the evangelical revival should at last reach a class at first repelled by its crude- ness, and give us the ritualistic revival of the last years of the century just gone. This ritualistic revival at first affected only one branch of the Protestant Church, but it has now extended to nearly all, and aesthetic order and more elaborate and RELIGIOUS TYPES 115 ornate worship is almost the note of the present generation. The feelings of many who have no great sympathy with this form of aesthetic expression are in danger of a certain outrage from the prevalent tendency, for, after all, even the emo- tional type of religious life does not always by any means seek this outward expression of its desire for unity and harmony. There is also what may be loosely called a mystic type of emotional religion in which the unity sought is thought of as actually one of substance. We feel our life is torn and distraught, disrupted and discordant. We seek in God a final unity and harmony. The whole emotional sit- uation passionately cries out for inward peace. Augustine has given classical form to this demand of the soul for God, and knowledge that only in God does the soul find rest. Such mystic emotionalism may find expression in art, but in classic mys- ticism it has almost scorned the outward and visible as hindrances to that intimate fellowship which it craves in an actually losing of ourselves in God. Thus in Tauler and in German Theology the mystic com- 116 RELIGION AND LIFE munion is figured as such identification and unity of substance that only the mystic rapture and ecstatic vision of love can give us the final assurance that we need of eternal rest in Endless and Un- speakable Divinity. All art is powerless, all music vain in attempting any expres- sion of this religious longing and all- absorbing faith. And he who does not reckon with this faith as a constantly recurring and tre- mendously powerful factor in human so- ciety is blind to the forces that are creating and recreating humanity. Just as critical and skeptical philosophy has finished its work of once and for all banishing mys- ticism from the field of rationalized life, up it crops with new explosive force to defy under all conditions the sentence of death by its tremendous and self -evidencing vitality. Those who are not mystics must seek to understand the hunger of the soul which is so often ministered to by mysticism. The craving for unity with God, and ultimate harmony with the universe, has been a factor in the religious life of all ages, and RELIGIOUS TYPES 117 represents to many the only ideal high enough and permanent enough to give sufficient motive for life and its activity. That it has at times sunk into unethical quietism can hardly be denied, just as aesthetic religious life has often ended in unethical formalism, show, and even in irreligious sensuousness. At the same time it has, at times, proved a most virile and unconquerable element in the lifting man above the seen and the temporal and giv- ing him strength and poise for such work as Bernard had to do, or Augustine himself accomplished. Byzantine art has probably been se- riously underestimated because so much of the best of it was swept away in the Mo- hammedan flood. There is so much in that which remains to us of real religious feeling that we gladly believe that, with all its faults, Byzantine religious life was not wholly swallowed up in the stiff formalism and pious phrase-making under which it was burdened, and which it handed over as a woeful heritage to its daughters, the Russian Church and the churches of the Orient. It is from this 118 RELIGION AND LIFE emotional side that, we believe, Byzantine Christianity can alone be understood. The symbols and creeds that are repeated so glibly and that are held on to with such fanatical zeal are merely war banners made traditionally sacred by the blood of past conflicts. The intellectual interest in them seems wholly gone. ^Esthetic and mystic interests seem to have been the overwhelming factors in the life of the old Greek, or, more properly, Hellenistic, Christianity. These are the elements that entered so potently into Neoplatonic re- ligious life, and when a crass unsesthetic materialism "^gains ground among us there arise protests, often crude enough indeed, but yet effective protests in the life of New Thought movements, Theosophy, Christian Science, and similar appeals. These are not to be met and conquered by intellectual analysis, or dismissed with ridicule, scorn, and laughter, but to be sympathetically studied and understood, and their protest registered in our lives and our message; for the emotional and intuitional temperaments crave satisfaction in the realization of their ideal, and in some way this craving must be RELIGIOUS TYPES 119 related to any answer we try to give to the eager questioning of life. To a religious life in New England that had been intellectually analyzed into tat- ters Phillips Brooks came with a note of emotional and intuitional directness that in many instances, without changing the intellectual preconceptions in the least, changed the lives of hundreds thirsting for the religious life in forms far removed from intellectual analysis, but ministering to the parched and dried places of the soul's life emotionally un watered. The emotional de- mands thus ministered to were various in the last degree, and ran the gamut from de- sire for ornate service to mystic satisfac- tion in emotional surrender; but even many far outside the immediate influence of this religious directness felt the new power and significance of the personality. For religion is power, not logical process. The second great type of religious per- sonality is that of intellectual emphasis. The mind finds its religious satisfaction in holding a great and satisfying dogmatic system, and in working out the details of the system into authoritative self-con- 120 RELIGION AND LIFE sistency. Frequent as has been the con- flict between "science" and "dogmatic theology" — for so the quarrel should be described rather than between "religion" and science — the resemblance between this type of religious thinker and the great speculative scientists is striking and il- luminating. The intellectual religious type seeks fulfillment for his ideal in a com- plete and intellectually satisfying system. Usually he regards this as based upon past authority, but the really great dog- matic theologian has always rewritten his system entire; it is only the epigonen who take over the system from another hand. Augustine, Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, Cal- vin, among the older scholastics, and Owen, Jonathan Edwards, and Dorner among the more modern ones, have thus found rest for their religious faith in great systems of thought which may excite our merely aesthetic admiration, much as do great cathedrals, or wondrous symphonic poems from some great musician. This intel- lectual dogmatic impulse is akin to the speculative scientific interest that presses for a self -consistent and therefore satisfying RELIGIOUS TYPES 121 interpretation of the world in terms of mat- ter or energy or of electrons. On the lower plane of everyday life, where most of us live, this type finds the deepest religious experience linked with a system of thought, it may be Roman Catholic popular theology, or evangelical Arminianism, or Calvinism subjected to much evangelical reinterpretation; but the system looms up as the important thing, and the highest religious experience with- out these systematic formulations is almost unthinkable. To such a mind mysticism seems shadowy and unreal, and all aesthetic emotional expression as vague sentimen- tality. Such a mind rejoices in positive and definite statements of "truth," and craves dogmatic and final sharpness in all defini- tion. In the acceptance of a system from the past and taking religious delight in it such a mind is hardly aware of the way it recreates the system for personal use, and finds deepest satisfaction in the way the old system can be stretched to cover new situations utterly unthought of by the first formulator. Mohammedan and Con- fucian theology share with Roman Catholic 122 RELIGION AND LIFE scholasticism and Puritan theology the gen- eral strength and weakness of this type of religious development. The strength is apparent in history. The men who have responded to the religious appeal in this form swept away Byzantian mysticism and aesthetic formalism, and covered their churches with the whitewash of the mosque. They linked Europe in an in- tellectual imperialism that at last defied Mohammedanism, and again in turn knit the souls of a band of reformers so to- gether that they defied the forces of Roman Catholic reaction, and made Hol- land, Scotland, and Switzerland the bul- warks of the Reformation. This intellectual religious type is not of necessity in any sense truly philosophical. Even when allied with some popular sys- tem of philosophy, the philosophy is not the main organizing interest. For this in- tellectual type one goes to the great specu- lative religious thinkers, who find the expressions for their religious needs only in speculations that far transcend any au- thoritative system, and whose note is rather an overwhelming religious curiosity than a RELIGIOUS TYPES 123 demand for intellectual rest in a system. Thus Origen, Abelard, and Pascal illus- trate to us a type of intellectual religious development found in various shades in all vital religions, but which marks par- ticularly the restless speculative life of India. Such temperaments start often from an assumed authority as final, but only that from this temporary resting place a new quest may be made for still larger and deeper truth. Within scholas- ticism this temperament soon makes itself felt. Duns Scotus and Zwingli are, perhaps, good examples of a type which, in spite of sincere acceptance of a dogmatic system, really is interested far more deeply in a speculative system, which, in the last analysis, outweighs the dogmatic. The third type may be called that of religious pragmatism. Action is here the highest expression of religious devotion. It is often fashionable to sum up the reli- gious life in "doing," but, after all, doing never can be more than one outcome of thinking and feeling. To love God and our neighbor will result in appropriate ac- tion, but we must think God, and must 124 RELIGION AND LIFE come into some emotional contact with our neighbor before we can either love the one or help the other. At the same time on large ranges of the religious life the actual expression of religious idealism is only to be found in the activity of the life. The activity may be thrown into relief by an intellectual background; the work is done "out of principle," or it may have an emo- tional element: "I feel it is right to do this or that," but the essence is the doing of some work that has a religious inspira- tion as its motive and purpose. Great as Luther was both intellectually and emo- tionally, he yet is really of this active pragmatic type. He saw in work the cen- ter of religious devotion. He was before everything else a man of action. His keen intellect easily found reasons for his ac- tivity, but it did not rest upon any intel- lectual analysis. His emotional life was profound, and his sermons and hymns are masterpieces of emotional religious expres- sion, but again they are the by-products of his unceasing activity. The year at the Wartburg was filled with intellectual work of a high order and great variety, but RELIGIOUS TYPES 125 Luther himself felt that he was "an idler'* (Miissiggaenger) . He was lost without the active work of church organization. His restless energy was continually finding new channels, and his practical organizing in- terest dominates both his intellectual and emotional life. Perhaps the same may be said as emphatically of John Knox, whose intellectual life was almost entirely subor- dinated to his political and social activity as a reorganizer, not only of the Scottish Church, but of Scottish life. To this type belongs also John Wesley. The more resolutely anyone faces the analysis of the actual religious lives that have made history, the more evident does it become that religious enthusiasm is of the whole nature, and that it cannot be confined even mainly to any one channel of expression. It has fructified and strength- ened human life along all the lines of its in- telligence, its emotions, and its activities. It is, in fact, a great and fundamental impulse, to ignore which is as unscientific as to refuse to examine the pressure of the air, or to try and believe that history can be explained without study of its ideals. 126 RELIGION AND LIFE THE LITERATURE James's "Varieties of Religious Experience," Royce's chapter on "Mysticism" in his "The World and the Individual." But above all, religious biog- raphy, and especially autobiography — Augustine's "Confessions," Laud's "Vindication," John Wesley's "Journal," McGiffert's "Martin Luther," etc. CHAPTER IX Ethics and Religion The relation of ethics to religion is a subject of constantly recurring debate. Of the intimate relationship in the past there can be no question. In early stages of culture all conduct was linked with reli- gion, and when religions become obedience to custom without ethical content they are generally seen to be slowly decaying. Science by its very nature will never be content to have religion and ethics stand as final and primitive impulses baffling all analysis. All we can say now is that no satisfactory analysis has yet been made. The ethical and the religious impulses are the material with which we deal, and all attempts so far to resolve them into still more simple impulses have proved unsatis- factoiy. The theory of evolution, with its law of the survival of that which proves useful in the struggle for life, seemed at one time to promise much aid, but it is now seen that it does not and cannot 127 128 RELIGION AND LIFE deal with origins, and that somewhere hfe passes from an unethical to an ethical, and from a nonreligious to a religious plane, but when or how we as yet do not know. It is often forgotten that modern science con- sists largely in describing the unfamiliar in images borrowed from the familiar, and that this is justified by the fact that in that way we come into possession of power to handle and master the unfamiliar, but that it in no way removes the initial mystery. Somewhere the mind baffled in its analysis rests upon the assumption of a Law, or a Universe or System of Things, or an Ab- solute or an Ultimate Being, or an Infinite. These are all terms that express simply our definite finite limitations. The human mind at this stage of our development is simply not in a position to either set limits or discover them to the universe, nor can we in any way actually conceive an unlimited universe. Our mental analyt- ical machinery breaks down in attempting the task. Not that we will ever give it up; we will forever attempt what is now for us impossible, and grow mentally in attempting it. ETHICS AND RELIGION 129 It is in this unexplored and baffling world of being that faith says to man's soul that God dwells. This unexplored realm seemed to primitive man very near and relatively comprehensible. For the modern man mystery has as often taken the place of supposed knowledge as actual knowledge has taken the place of sup- posed mystery. Every child and every savage will say that matter is quite simple and knowable. Anything hard and ex- tended is "matter." The modern man knows that we know nothing about any ultimate "hard" and "extended" matter. We may talk for convenience of "dead," "motionless" matter, but there is no dead, motionless matter. The picture of our world of "hard" and "extended" matter that seems at present best to answer our needs is a picture of infinitesimal atoms made up of corpuscles dashing about at speeds that if in straight lines would carry them in four seconds or so to the sun, and with a potential energy that would rock the world were it exerted without the counter-balance of like energy. To say that such a picture removes mystery or 130 RELIGION AND LIFE increases the simplicity of the world for the ordinary man is absurd. Its only justi- fication lies in its enabling the experimen- tal scientist to handle better his systematic experience. This universe, or system of things, is, however, constantly pressing down upon us. How are we related to it? What does it mean for us? Is it our friend or our enemy? Religious faith has from the be- ginning of culture evidently moved men to relate themselves to this world about them. This faith has with steady consistency maintained that God was as personal as we are, and that God or gods governed this world beyond us, in a higher but analogous way to our governance of our smaller world. Under all forms of faith, from the crudest polytheism to the most spiritual and refined metaphysical pantheism, re- ligious faith has interpreted that universe *'beyond" and yet "within" in images bor- rowed from our own most inmost expe- rience. That our several interpretations are final can no more be claimed for them than that the physical theory of electrons as the ultimate of matter can be hailed as final. ETHICS AND RELIGION 131 The justification in the one case as in the other is the mastery they have given us and still give us of our inward and deepest experience. Religion has not explained our universe any more than science has, but it has co- ordinated it, and in ever more satisfying form enabled us to conceive of it as ra- tional and purposeful. The intellectual formulae in which it does this are as fleet- ing as the terminology of any systematic and growing science or any fashionable philosophy. Even when names remain like *'God," the "soul," and "immortality," the actual meanings of these words for Emanuel Kant are not those of the childlike faith of a simple-hearted peasant. What is the same is the effectiveness of the faith in both cases to give strength and significance to the life. And the reality of the faith is not attested by the degree of rationality it may attain to, but by this effectiveness in sustaining life's purpose; hence the uni- versal experience that faith is known by its works and not by its formulae. And when any intellectual analysis of faith has so distracted us from its real content that 132 RELIGION AND LIFE it ceases to sustain us, we must become again as little children, not by acceptance of now impossible formulations of faith, but by "being born again" in our whole relation to life in God. Here again all religious teaching is at one with human experience. From the beginning of human experience man is born into close human relationships. The great imperatives of the universe swayed its life long before man appeared. Now, in the conscious human life these imperatives appear as categorical demands upon him, with the seeming alternative of disobedience. The mother should love her babe, but she may be an "unnatural" mother and refuse. Cain should love and protect Abel, but he may be an unnatural brother and murder him. In their complex social forms these imperatives have a history. Even the simplest social moral- ity is the product of an age-long process. A long evolution may be traced in such an idea as "murder." The experiences of the man and the woman and child in the simplest group life give more and more elaborate meaning to the great imperative ETHICS AND RELIGION 133 that founded the family in the beginning. Man rises daily from the brute to a divine companionship with this eternal mandate. Nor does he separate his experiences in the family from his experiences with the world. The complex, invisible world which he peoples with gods and demons is the ulti- mate sanction for his conduct in the social group. God watches over him and sees him, and when Cain slays his brother God tells him that his brother's blood crieth against him from the ground. His field of ethics is never really separated from his religious faith. As time goes on man formulates his re- ligion and his ethics, and these formula- tions have frequently very different origin and purpose, and in our modern world have often flown very far apart; and to-day many of the debates about the relation of religion to ethics would be more fruitful if they were begun and car- ried on as debates upon the relation of religious formulations and varied systems of ethics. For our own scientific purpose we must tear religions and systems of ethics apart. We must often speak as if 134 RELIGION AND LIFE the imperatives behind them both were separable. We must consider and weigh the vaHdity of these imperatives, and ask ourselves even such radical questions as whether or no there is a place "on the other side and beyond morality," and whether what we know as religious ex- perience may not be a vast delusion. But in the long run man's experience is no more compartmental than his psychology, and sooner or later ethics and religion will both relate themselves to the great un- seen world. Man interprets personally, and knows both as above him and yet of his most inmost being. And nowhere has ethics been more real and vital than when brought into closest and most intimate touch with the funda- mental religious enthusiasm; and, on the other hand, the modern man is coming more and more to judge religion, not so much by its intellectual self-consistency or rational content as by its ethical effective- ness in the lives of those who experience its power. As the power of the ethical nature is its immediate and almost ex- plosive reaction, often baffling analysis, so ETHICS AND RELIGION 135 the power of the religious life is this same tremendous compulsion that links man with an unseen purpose far higher and greater than even he himself can describe. No one can really rationalize the life of Luther or explain its power; and still more awed and abashed do we stand before the religious mystery of Jesus Christ. And at these highest points we feel that conduct cannot be separated from the religious impulse, and that religion's highest and noblest and most self-evidencing power is displayed in the realm of everyday life, and that he who cannot love his brother whom he has seen cannot claim to love God whom he has not seen. Moreover, it is in these imperatives we see most clearly the workings of the uni- verse, whose infinite or transcendent life breaks in upon our life of phenomenal ex- perience. Thus God becomes personal to us, because we realize that the personal note is the highest thing that gives men and women character and value. The imperative "Thou shalt" opens our eyes to the fact that God is righteousness. And love as revealed in the divine human ex- 136 RELIGION AND LIFE perience opens our eyes to the fact that God is love; and when, therefore, Jesus proclaims God as a loving Father, and does so in wondering reproach that we did not long grasp this fact before, we hail it as the highest religious revelation of God; and when Jesus lives out that faith, we gladly say, "My Lord, my God," for this love has become now a real human experience, and we know God in Jesus Christ as loving, redeeming, and saving the world. Moreover, our religious faith finds its fullest exercise in its ethics. We go forth as coworkers with God to transform human life into the image of God, not as a tran- scendental "Infinite," nor yet a "Power not ourselves making for righteousness," nor the great "Unknown," but into the image of God as we have seen him in Christ Jesus. Of course our vision even then is limited by our ignorance and ethical in- competence. We only see as in a bronze mirror, and know only in part; but the most pressing imperative of our lives is that to relate ourselves to this life in and above our world, and to manifest its spirit- ual and moral glory, by sharing in it and ETHICS AND RELIGION 137 revealing it in our little measure as Jesus has revealed it in such satisfying com- pleteness, that we may be one with the Father as Jesus is one with God, and we with him. At the same time for many the religious source, as faith believes, is often not the conscious source of good men's ethics. The religious relation of their ethical life to anything that can be called God is want- ing. This has many reasons. Sometimes men have intellectually rejected the formu- lation of religious faith so completely that the faith has gone with the formulation. This is often the fault of religious teachers who have taught men falsely that to touch one iota of the formulation of religious faith was to destroy the faith. Thus Jesus and Paul were rejected as dangerous re- ligious innovators because they dared to question the accepted religious formula- tions. The false teachers are often ac- cepted at their word, and when some part of a religious system is seen to be intel- lectually impossible the whole system is given over. Sometimes the religious na- ture is not recognized and is starved, as a 138 RELIGION AND LIFE man may starve his musical sense, or his mathematical genius, or his social soul. We may destroy even high capacity for certain activities by simply letting them alone. Sometimes the man makes a crass mistake, and he is, without knowing it, serving God under some other name, but because he does not use the conventional name thinks he rejects, and is thought to reject God. According to Jesus at least, the moral life is a better index to the relationship with God than professions of belief, for, although Jesus demanded also professions of faith, what must always be present to our mind is the fact that pro- fessions of faith may be lifeless conformity to group type, and that denials may be vital attempts to relate the life to the Divine Life above us. Both in science and in religion, in aesthetics" and in ethics, the formulations are constantly changing, and timid souls think that because the familiar phrases are challenged or are gone, no science, no re- ligion, no aesthetics, and no ethics are left, whereas in truth often the older formula- tions had served their day and now had ETHICS AND RELIGION 1S9 to be gotten rid of that the old truth might more clearly be expressed. Thus John Wesley cleared the ground for a new movement which his critics thought was the overthrow of all religion and the re- jection of all common sense. He is most free who feels the imperial pressure of a categorical imperative to know as far as in him lies his world, to do as far as in him lies what is right and true, and to relate himself as far as he can to God, the Spirit of all truth, as we see God in the face of Christ Jesus. THE LITERATURE The volumes of Hastings's "Dictionary of Re- ligion and Ethics" (five published 1912) will be found to contain a great deal of material. See also Palmer's "The Field of Ethics." Spencer's "Data of Ethics" presents his view of the relation- ship. Contrast with this Paul Carus's "Kant and Spencer." Compare also Smyth's "Christian Eth- ics." The work of Kant upon the metaphysics of religion has been the starting point for nearly all modern discussions of this question. Other conclusions will perhaps be reached from those of the chapter if the student follows Spinoza, Schleier- macher, and Caird's interpretation of Hegel. CHAPTER X Religion and the State The present attitude of the state, that is, of a community poHtically organized, to the church, or religion organized, would have been quite unthinkable before Locke and the rationalism of that day. Even the humanists, and men who, like Hobbes, had no dogmatic belief, felt that religion was essential to the very existence of a political state. To-day even where the church is established by law, the actual separation of the two forms of life is really complete. And the assumption is readily made that religion has lost its significance for the political organization. When the Reforma- tion gave religious impetus to the humanis- tic movement, and freed men's minds from the bondage of authority — and it is note- worthy that only a religious movement was strong enough to do this — no one really contemplated a separation of the two forms of organization. Luther expected the German princes to enforce true reli- 140 RELIGION AND THE STATE 141 gion and to guard the church. Calvin expected the church to guard and really guide the state. Hobbes expected the state to formulate and enforce an orthodox faith, nominal conformity to which would give inward freedom. The case of the United States, with its almost complete separation of church and state, was rather an historical necessity because of the inability of any one eccle- siastical organization to represent the na- tional life than the outcome of any theory. The New England states had, as a matter of fact, the beginnings of a state church, and only the fact that the episcopacy was almost wholly tory in its sympathies pre- vented it from claiming state support, or it might readily enough have become the church of some state, or even the nation. This was not to be, and from now on it is likely that separation between these two types of organization will be more and more complete. Why? For the simple reason that we are seeing daily more clearly that the purpose of an organization is what should determine its life and character, and that 142 RELIGION AND LIFE the purpose of a church is one and the purpose of any poHtical organization is another. A Free Mason's lodge might con- ceivably take charge of the musical in- terests of a community, but it has no special fitness for so doing. An art acad- emy attracting artistic Masons and artistic non-Masons will do their work much better and unhampered by traditions with a quite different history. The community is grad- ually realizing that in organization there is elimination of waste, and much greater potential mastery over our world than in unorganized units, and that the clearer and more definite the aim the more power resides in the organization. The state has nothing mysterious about it. It is human life politically organized to enable us to live together richly and in peace. The form and power of the political organiza- tion is a matter of social expediency. And all states have divine right precisely as any college or academy, any business corpora- tion or social club has divine right. They are all ordained of God for their several purposes, and so far as the purpose is a legitimate one no real Protestant should RELIGION AND THE STATE 143 call any of them unholy or unclean. All forms of organization, ecclesiastical, polit- ical, educational, commercial, social, or artistic, have their history in human life and its social needs, and all are alike sub- ject to the laws of efficiency and expe- diency. It is a matter, therefore, of experience and social wisdom how far the community organized politically shall sub- sidize art, education, and ecclesiastical organizations to promote religion. No community has as yet refused support to such organizations. The churches of the United States receive an enormous sum in the remission of taxes. Some time this may be withdrawn, but at present even those who have no personal sympathy with the aims of one or all of these eccle- siastical organizations still regard it as socially desirable, apparently, to render this exceedingly great aid; and so long as this aid is accepted every church should feel itself in no way a private and personal institution, but a servant of the com- munity which supports it. It is under the most solemn obligations to pay its way in service, and to render any and all 144 RELIGION AND LIFE service it can render without unnecessaiy reduplication and waste. The poHtical organization of a modern state unfits it in many ways for giving religious and even moral instruction. Here the churches should render all the service they can, and become the organization through which the community expresses its will to religiously educate. Sometimes the community has not even undertaken to supply by its political organization machinery and support for other forms of education, and until it does the church, although in some ways not well adapted to do this work in the best way, may well enter the field to render this service, in God's name, to the community. Again, what will be the form of the service cannot be settled a priori. Only large and critically considered social experience can give us an answer. Already the churches are com- mitting to other organizations, such as the Young Men's Christian Association and so- cial settlements, work they cannot do as well as special organizations for these specific purposes can do them. These are as much divine institutions for their spe- RELIGION AND THE STATE 145 cial form of service as churches are for theirs. We do not exalt the ecclesiastical organization by refusing providential char- acter to other organizations. For the Christian Protestant all life is sacred, and there are no secular affairs. What, therefore, separates the religious forms of the past from our own day is not the fact that the age is less religious — it is probably more religious — but the new out- look upon life, and the more or less clear- eyed recognition of the fact that God works in human forms, and expresses his life in the limited life of his children, and that these expressions are marked at every point by our ignorance and limitations. We have no ideal church government given to us from heaven with divine authority. We have authority given us from heaven to fit our organizations from generation to generation to the varied needs of men. The authority, therefore, of any organiza- tion is limited by its underlying purpose. The church has high authority for render- ing its peculiar service; it has no especial authority to dictate the forms of political organization or to limit the legitimate ac- 146 RELIGION AND LIFE tivities of other organizations equally called with her to render their peculiar forms of service. Absolute and sharp delimitation is as impossible here as elsewhere. Human life is one, and the universe is one. To-day- organic and inorganic chemistry are terms of convenience — the sharp distinction has been swept away. The complexity of human purpose is very great. The larger purpose often includes the smaller. At times there seem inevitable conflicts be- tween men's purposes, but at heart we all believe that a splendid and thoroughgoing unity binds together all our complex aims, and that in the fulfillment of our highest purpose alone does life gain its deepest significance. The religious man sees in his religion the relation of all his aims and hopes, ambi- tions and purposes to God's plan. He feels so personally linked with God that he knows something of that plan, and finds in the working out of God's plan for him- self and the world about him his highest joy and largest and most permanent sat- isfaction. In another respect the whole attitude RELIGION AND THE STATE 147 toward what is rather unfortunately called "religious toleration" has changed. At one time the unity of the group was not only the most important element in its strength, but the religious organization was the most effective bond to secure that unity. To break that unity was to menace the group soUdarity, and even to-day group solidar- ity is realized as vastly important. The fiercest and most tragic war of recent times was waged to secure group solidarity. But no longer does any religious organiza- tion represent this effective bond. This is often a cause of surely somewhat thought- less lamentation. The bond that now holds groups together is that complex and undefinable thing we call group or national culture. It has, indeed, many elements, but no one of these elements can be called supreme. It is not language; Switzerland has three official tongues. It is not race; there are no satisfactory definitions of race. It is not law; the Roman and English em- pires have shown that various systems of law may be worked together. It is not any geographical term; for here again the strongest empires have defied geography. 148 RELIGION AND LIFE Yet culture has all these elements, and among the most important is the religious life. It is not religious dogmas; these may be common property of many cultures, as in Persia, Egypt, and Turkey, without giv- ing final shape to any. It is not religious cult or rite, but religious ideals. These may not be widely spread, or even every- where effective, any more than national painting or national music is within the scope of all. But these ideals lend tone and color to any national group, and it is impossible to understand Italy, France, China, Japan, or Russia without some knowledge of the religious ideals which give color and character to the whole national group life. What we call tolerance is the gradual recognition of the varied complexity in the group life, and the grow- ing experience of the far greater strength and purity of the higher elements of cul- ture when they have liberty to work and express themselves unhampered by the lower motive of external group unity; and, in point of fact, this is daily being seen more clearly, and men are coming to realize that the strongest group bond is not an RELIGION AND THE STATE 14.9 external conformity to group type, but an inner kinship with an expanding cultural ideal. Tolerance has still the air of a claim to absolute knowledge, which, however, "tol- erates" error, while, in fact, the modern world is both farther away from any claim to absolute knowledge than any previous world of thought, and also more resolutely bent upon getting rid of error, and more intolerant of it. Again, it is our sense of the relative character of all our formula- tions that is making us more and more willing to learn all we can from any man of good will who seems perhaps to question our favorite formulations, but who also claims to have something worth our while to listen to. Thus in the political world we listen to men whose proposals contem- plate an entire reconstruction of our social order. We listen with doubt and a whole- some skepticism, but we listen. Once this was seemingly quite incompatible with any group solidarity; to-day we realize that freedom to hear and speak has strength- ened group solidarity. So also in the religious realm. We listen to Mohammed 160 RELIGION AND LIFE and Buddha, not because we think them right, but because we realize that to under- stand them is our only way of meeting any error they proclaim or getting any truth they may present. Nor have our experi- ments in this catholicity worked badly. It has led, indeed, to much reformulation of religious statement, but it has allayed some of the bitterest and most effective opposition that religion has had to en- counter. To the faithful historian it has long been known that there never was an "age of faith," and that the seeming unity of religious organization on the basis of phrases and formulse never really repre- sented any vital unity, either intellectual or moral or religious. What could be the value of a religious unity with Leo X as its visible head? What could be the value of a religious unity that was dominated by Constantine or Henry the Eighth.^ Reli- gion as the highest in the scale of the imponderable higher values rests upon in- timate personal complex experiences, of which only the religious man can bear his testimony, and whose objective value can be measured only by the correspondence of , RELIGION AND THE STATE 151 his experiences with those of other men, and by the fruitfulness of his experience and in- terpretation of it in the ways of Hfe. When Paul and Luther and Wesley claim to have personal transforming experiences the world calls them insane. But others recognize the same elements in a smaller way in their own lives and accept their testimony, and see the fruitfulness of these experiences in strength for life, and in purification of conduct, and in new and vital relationships to the Unseen. It is open to anyone not having had any religious experience to deny its reality, as anyone never having had a musical rapture thinks coldly and con- temptuously of the enthusiastic musician. And the religious man can do little but live the religious life and proclaim as well as he may the source of its vitality. Hence we are willing to welcome in the name of religion anyone who seems to have had, even in strange dress and using unfamiliar formulae, a real religious insight, and who claims to have found in the phase of truth he presents strength and grace for life and death. The degeneracy of this attitude may 152 RELIGION AND LIFE often be represented by a harmful and destructive indifference. Much boasted "tolerance" is simply mental inertia and moral indolence. The remedy is, however, not a return to narrow insistence upon any formulae, but a broad and strong emphasis upon the need of truth and the fatal char- acter of all indolently harbored untruth. Never was it more important for the life and soul of any of us that we should have clear and definite views of religious truth. We may not profess to cover the whole wide universe in the sweep and scope of our confession of faith. But it should be sharply and clearly our own confession of faith and personal hope. It will be a growing confession of faith as our reli- gious experience widens and quickens, and as our own intellectual life changes and deepens. It will be humbly held, because we are so easily misled, and it will try to include the values in life that we have found our own need of in actual struggle toward higher things. Yet this personal and ever more or less private formulation of our faith from time to time has a quite different meaning from RELIGION AND THE STATE 153 equally important social confessions of faith. These can never be more than a compromise. Two persons who think they really believe the same words are either simply ignorant of the limitation of human speech, or have repeated formulae they have not weighed and made their own. All definitions are delimitations for special pur- pose, and can have value only when we know the purpose. For practical purposes we use words with general but indefinite agreement as to their significance. Social creeds are general expressions of agree- ment. The more exactly and scientifically they are expressed the more disagreement will they evoke. With increasing intelli- gence and developed personality it is becoming increasingly impossible to find any set of words intelligent men will accept without the right to use the words in their own sense. The social creed is a broad platform expressing the general pur- pose of the creedal body, and the limits of disagreement are always various. The per- sonal element, with its sense of the need of clear understanding of individual position on the one hand, and the sense of unity of aim 154. RELIGION AND LIFE underlying all differences on the other, makes it a delicate question what are the limits of cooperation. One serious difficulty is that the answer to the question, "Have I a right within an organization?" has been too much placed on a legal basis, and where there is doubt it has been fought out upon merely techni- cal and legal grounds. The answer should be a social answer, but should be given on the broadest lines of social expediency. It would be death to any organization to refuse to tolerate any variations in opinion. The holding of a creedal position intel- lectually may leave one quite disloyal to the real purpose of the creedal organiza- tion, whereas wide difference of intellec- tual judgments may give vitality and adaptive power to the society. The broad lines of usefulness within the organization for the advancement of its main end are the only safe ones for determination of any member's rights within the organiza- tion. Even on these lines mistakes would be made, but probably far less often than under past and existing conditions. There would thus be a constant demand RELIGION AND THE STATE 155 for reexamination and revision of all plat- forms, and intellectual inertia would be disturbed and made anxious. The fantas- tic notion that we can stand still and cease to grow without dying is still wide- spread. It is troublesome to reclothe anew from time to time our faith in new formulae, but just as we have to daily feed and reclothe our bodies, so from time to time we must feed and reclothe our faith, and a strong, healthy faith needs constant exercise and constant reclothing. Thus faith interpenetrates all life. Its meaning for life is all-important and all- embracing. Those who turn away from the subject in ignorant indifference know no real history and miss the clue to man's deepest psychology, and the key to the mystery of life and death. That faith will ever die is unthinkable. The courage and poise real faith gives to the human life will make it triumphant amid all seeming de- feats, and as in the past so always when men most scornfully nail it to a cross, its resurrection is assured in still greater power to reorganize and quicken again 156 RELIGION AND LIFE human life for divinest mission; the revela- tion of God incarnate in a human life fit to be called the temple of the living God; human lives reorganized as the sons and daughters of the Most High. THE LITERATURE The relation of the church to the state has a whole library to itself, and yet an adequate treat- ment from the modern point of view is lacking. Dunning discusses the matter briefly in his "Poht- ical Theories," Volume II; especially see pages 365, 366. Geffcken's work is translated from the German under the title "Church and State" (1877). A short article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (XI) on Establishment is an excellent sketch of the his- tory, but the bibliography is meager. INDEX Ab^lard, 123 Abraham, 95 Absolute, the, 128 Ages, Middle, 89 Agnosticism, 104 American, citizenship, 99 Amphyctionic Council, 31 Anabolism, 51 Ancestor worship, 27 Animism, 28, 72 Ansehn, 120 Aquinas, Thomas, 12 Arabic scholarship, 87 Architecture, 37 Aristocracy, military, 86 Ai-minianism, 121 Art, 37 Assisi, Francis of, 61 Astarte, 35, 46 Astronomy, astrology and, 35 Augustine, 115 Autosuggestion, 57 Baal, priests of, 57 Babylon, 43, 85 Bach, 114 Balkan states, 4 Beckmesser, 59 Beethoven, 77 Bichloride of mercury, 19 Blood, relationship, 96 Brahmanism, 111 Brooks, Phillips, 119 Browning, Robert, 100 Buddha, 62 Buddhism, 2, 92 Buddhism, rise of, 9 Byzantine art, 117 Cain, story of, 95 Calvin, 64 Caste, priestly, 40 Cathedral, 112 Certainty, mathematical, 13 Chant, Gregorian, 37 Character, social and per- sonal, 24 China, 102 Christianity, 9, 86 Christianity, Byzantine, 118 Christianity, China, 43 Church, Roman, 10 Church and state, 97 Cicero, time of, 9 Clerics, 48 Comte, 28 Conduct, rehgion and, 101 Confederacy, Indian, 31 Conformity, 52 Confucius, 58, 92 Cosmogony, science and, 37 157 • 158 INDEX Creeds, 153 Crusades, 92, 100 Cycles, vegetative and as- tronomical, 35 Cynicism, 10 Damascus, 64 Dance, 37 Darwin, 36 Death, 28 Definitions, value of, 1 Delphic, 31 Democracies, 85 Democracy, 23 Democracy, English, 11 Democracy, superstition and, 6 Despotism, 23 Determinism, 67 Dorner, 120 Dreams, 27 Ecclesiasticism, 49, 97 Education, Jewish, 47 Education, primitive, 47 Edwards, Jonathan, 120 Egypt, 43, 74 Emotions, religion and, 22, 111 Empire, Roman, 86 Energy, life as, 69 Epicureanism, 10 Epistomology, 12 Ethics, religion and, 24, 127 Etiquette, 49, 50 Evolution, 68, 105, 127 Experiences, religious, 22 Experimentation, 14 Fact, material, 75, 83 Faith, life and, 155 Faith, reason and, 21 Fear, rehgion and. 46 Fire, tribal, 33 Frazer, 33, 38 Free will, 67 Genius, insanity and, 60 Genius, quality of, 79 Gnosticism, 10 God, notion of, 27 Gravitation, 19 Greek art, 44 Guilds, Middle Age, 87 Hellenism, 86 Hehnholz, 36 Hesiod, 36 Hinduism, 81 Hobbes, Thomas, 140, 141 Homer, 36 Hydrogen, 15 Hymns, Vedic, 36 Idealism, creative, 70, 71 Idealism, rehgion and, 71 Idealism, transcendental, 10 Imperative, categorical, 90 Imperatives, ethical, 132 Inhibitions, children and, 50 INDEX 159 Inspiration, 78 Instinct, the artistic, 75 Interest, priestly and pro- phetic, 40 Ion, 17 Isaac, 95 Israel, 74 Jacob, 83 Jehovah, 74 Jesus, 58, 77, 136, 137 Joy, religion and, 47 Judaism, 42, 92, 111 Kant, 72, 131 Katabolism, 51 Knox, John, 125 Laboratory, 21 Leibnitz, 12 Levitical, the development, 52 Lincoln, strength of, 8 Locke, John, 140 Luther, 62, 124, 135, 140 Lutheran Church, 98 Machinery, magic and, 6 Magic, 29 Mana, 29 Materialism, 10 Mathematics, 13 Matter, 129 Method, experimental, 16 Mexico, 88 Missions, foreign, 103 Modernism, 98 Mohammedanism, 4, 47 Mosque, 113 Mutiny, Indian, 4 Mysterious and religion, 27 Mysticism, 116 Mysticism, Byzantine, 122 Myths and their meaning, 33 Napoleon I, 18 Nations, seven, 31 Negroes, African, 113 Neoplatonic religion, the, 118 Nietzsche, 61 Northwest, winning of, 89 Olympic feasts, 31 Organization, rights within, 31 Origen, 123 Owen, 120 Oxygen, 15 Paganism, 84 Pantheism, 130 Pantheon, 31, 35 Parkman, 89 Parsifal, 23 Pascal, 123 Paul, 137, 151 Personal, God, 130 Personality, 70, 109 Perugino, 70 IGO INDEX Phoenicians, 35 Plate, photographic, 20 Plato, 72 Polynesian words, 29 Polytheism, 32 Poseidon, 35 Priest, 39 Priest, ethics of the, 53 Primitive man, 28 Progress, 106 Prophet, Jewish, 76 Prophetic, the, interest, 56 Psychology, 110 Psychology, religious, 23 Puritanism, 112 Quackery, 80 Quietism, 117 Raphael, 70 Rationalism, 104 Reason, faith and, 21 Reformation, 61, 96, 98, 140 Reger, Max, 114 Religion, aesthetic, 113 Religion, definition of, 2 Religion, function of, 25 Rehgion, importance of study, 3 Religion, primitive, 30 Rehgion, types of, 108 Revival, evangelical, 114 Revival, ritualistic, 114 Rh3rthm, group and per- sonal, 44 Russian, the, church, 117 Sabbath, 45 Savages, 29 Savonarola, 64, 80 Schleiermacher, 73, 110 Scholasticism, 12 Science, Christian, 90, 118 Scotus, Duns, 123 Seasons, cycle of, 34 Selfishness, class, 75 Sepoys, 4 Sexual, rehgion and the. 111 Shakespeare, 78 Smith, W. Robertson, 29 Socialist party, 6 Socrates, 58 Solidarity, the group, 147, 149 Soul, its aspects, 108 Spencer, Herbert, 27 Spinoza, 12 Stoicism, 10 Superstition, 7 Swedenborg, 61 Synagogue, 47 Tables, law of, 96 Taboo, 29, 50, 94 Talmud, 43 Taste, appeal to, 20, 68 Tauler, 115 Taxes, remission of, 143 Theology, German, 115 Theosophy, 118 Thirty Yeais' War, 92 Toleration, 147, 149 Totemism, 73 Traditionalism, 84 INDEX 161 Transfiguration, Mount of, Wagner, 23, 70 63 Tree, worship of, 32 Truth, standai'd of, 30 Turkey, 148 Tylor, 28 Uniformity, faith in, 19 University, Mohammedan, 47 Wartburg, 124 Water, illustration from, 15 Weapons, 83, 139 Wesley, 64, 125 Women and rehgion, 7 World, Oriental, 102 Young Men's Christian As- sociations, 144 Values, rehgious, 23 Vu-gil, 9 Vision, creative, 80 Zeal, religious, 92 Zwingli, 123 Date Due i (I) 1 1012 01004 1459