صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

STUDY X. THE REALITY OF RELIGION.

"(For when Gentiles that have not the law do by nature the things of the law, these, not having the law, are the law unto themselves; in that they show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness therewith, and their thoughts one with another accusing or else excusing them)." (Rom. ii. 14, 15.)

(Acts

"That they should seek God, if haply they might feel after him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us." xvii. 27.)

PART I. RELIGION AS THE PROJECTION OF OUR OWN

DESIRES.

NOT a few thoughtful people are asking whether there is any reality corresponding to our conceptions of religion. An old college friend of mine, now a prominent professor in a great State university, came to me sometime since with just this difficulty. He had once been an ardent Christian; but, with some more or less superficial study of religion, he had come to the conclusion that it was purely a fiction of the imagination. There is also a group of psychological thinkers who feel that religion is just functional in origin-that is, it arises out of the activities of our own persons. It is the resultant of a certain mental stimulus arising out of social contacts. According to the functional theory, religion is just man's adjustment to a certain part of his environment. This definition of religion we would readily accept if the psychologist would allow us to define that environment in terms of a personal God.

This conception of religion arises out of a one-sided philosophy or a one-sided psychology. In our time of specialization there is danger that men shall lose perspective. Pratt, in his "Psychology of Religious Belief," justly calls attention to the fact that intellect and logic alone cannot give us truth. "The one thesis which I wish to defend, the one contention for which I really care, is that the whole man must be trusted as against any small portion of his nature, such as reason or perception." Whenever men have trust

[ocr errors]

"Pratt's "Psychology of Religious Belief," page 27.

ed one side of their nature alone, it has landed them in error. Of course the religionist has been accused of just this one-sidedness. It has been said that he follows not his reason, but his impulses.

The human heart's best; you prefer
Making that prove the minister

To truth; you probe its wants and needs,
And hopes and fears, then try what creeds
Meet those most aptly-resolute

That faith plucks such substantial fruit
Wherever these two correspond.1

The critic claims that out of our one-sided desire for a religious life we create our whole system.

Did not we ourselves make him?

Our mind receives but what it holds, no more,
First of the love, then-we acknowledge Christ—
A proof we comprehend his love, a proof
We had such love already in ourselves,
Knew first, what else we should not recognize,
'Tis mere projection from man's inmost mind."

There is certainly truth in this last quotation. If we did not have the Godhood in us, we could never comprehend God. We cannot know anything which is completely and absolutely foreign to our nature. The fact that we do comprehend God indicates that we are enough like him to come to know him. But, on the other hand, this does not prove that all our knowledge of him comes from our own imaginings. If religion is the result of pure imagination, how does it come that all peoples have it? No other form of pure imagination has universal sway. There must be some deeper explanation.

'Browning's "A Death in the Desert." "Ibid.

STUDY X. THE REALITY OF RELIGION.

"As the hart panteth after the water brooks,
So panteth my soul after thee, O God.

My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God:
When shall I come and appear before God?
My tears have been my food day and night,

While they continually say unto me, Where is thy God?
These things I remember, and pour out my soul within me,
How I went with the throng, and led them to the house of God,
With the voice of joy and praise, a multitude keeping holyday.
Why art thou cast down, O my soul?

And why art thou disquieted within me?

Hope thou in God; for I shall yet praise him
For the help of his countenance."

(Ps. xlii. 1-5.)

PART II. THE ORIGIN OF RELIGION.

The

THERE is planted deep in man a desire for full and complete development. The meaning and method of this development vary greatly with different groups, but the aspiring impulse is universal. It is likewise universally recognized that man needs help in this struggle for development. He feels that there is something without him which can help to make or mar his destiny. He feels that his inner life can be made complete only by the proper adjustment to this outer influence, and religion is just man's attempt to make this proper adjustment. This need for proper adjustment is just the deepest fact of human consciousness. savage has need for such an adjustment and attempts to make it. Fetishism, animism, and totemism are the results. "At one pole of being," says Talling, "the savage instinctively recognizes his [God's] existence. At the other philosophy needs God as the fundamental premise." Kant, in his "Critique of Practical Reason," says: "I find an ought within which compels me to complete development. But I cannot attain complete development if the universe is bad at heart and hence against me. Hence I must believe that the universe is for me, that there is a God at the heart of things, and that my self-development is proper adjustment of myself to this God." This is religion.

Talling, "The Science of Spiritual Life," page 49.

This sense of oughtness and its relationship to a higher power is universal, and all religious experiences have grown out of it. "The origin of religion consists in the fact that man has the infinite within him, even before he is himself conscious of it and whether he recognizes it or not." Eucken's "solid nucleus" of religion is the upspringing of God within the human soul. Jevons says that the "Continuum of Religion" is the direct and convincing revelation of God to the human soul, and every historian of religion must accept the facts of this religious consciousness.

It is generally agreed that the facts of religious consciousness are universal. What does that imply as to their reality? It means that there must be truth behind these facts, or else universal human nature is a lie. It does not mean that the forms of religion may not be filled with error, but it does mean that the religious impulse out of which these forms spring must have reality in it. If I cannot trust universal nature to tell the truth here, even though mixed with error, then I cannot trust human nature at all. There is no way of finding truth, and I am landed in nescience. But the mind will not rest in negation. We know that we can find truth, and we know that we find it by trusting our whole personality. Eucken might well have said of all knowledge and experience what he said of religion: "In the conviction of the author, religion is able to attain a secure position and an effective influence only when it is founded upon the whole of life and not upon a particular so-called faculty of the soul, be it intellect, feeling, or will."

If we trust the whole nature of man, it undoubtedly tells us that religion is a reality and that the only way to deny the truth is to discredit human nature. We cannot discredit human nature and still continue to think. We must, therefore, accept the fact of religion as real. The forms of religion may be false, but the central fact of religious consciousness as a relation to a superior being is as deep as human life itself and cannot be set aside.

"Tiele, "Elements of the Science of Religion," Volume II., page 230. "Eucken, "The Truth of Religion," Preface.

STUDY X. THE REALITY OF RELIGION.

"Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: or else believe me for the very works' sake." (John xiv. 11.)

"And one of the multitude answered him, Teacher, I brought unto thee my son, who hath a dumb spirit. And he asked his father, How long time is it since this hath come unto hm? And he said, From a child. And ofttimes it hath cast him both into the fire and into the waters, to destroy him: but if thou canst do anything, have compassion on us, and help us. And Jesus said unto him, If thou canst! All things are possible to him that believeth. Straightway the father of the child cried out, and said, I believe; help thou mine unbelief." (Mark ix. 17, 21-24.)

PART III. THE MINIMUM OF BELIEF.

Ir cannot be denied that we are in an age of unsettled faith. Historical research has undermined old beliefs, and criticism of the Biblical texts has made many uncertain of the exact authority of many passages. Many a student of religion is saying that he cannot think his way through the whole maze of the difficulties. He does not wish to be insincere and claim to believe that about which he knows nothing. Neither does he desire to throw away that which has given him power and may ultimately prove to be the truth. What, then, can he accept as absolutely abiding and on that build to a larger faith? A man at the University of Texas came to me in just this frame of mind on my last visit to that institution. What can we say to such a man?

First of all, we can say to him that there are certain fundamental facts which he can accept without any knowledge of historical or textual or any other form of criticism. He can accept the statement of the last study, that the religious consciousness is a universal reality. He can test this and verify it by his own nature. He knows that there is aspira

« السابقةمتابعة »