CHAPTER VI.

THE VOLITIONAL ELEMENT IN RELIGION.

The Relation of Religion to Conduct.

In the preceding chapters we have attempted to show the rôles played by the emotions and the intellect in the total religious experience. Here we shall endeavor to indicate the influence of the will on the same, or in other words the relation of religion to conduct. It will be remembered that a group of scholars, such as Feuerbach, Bradley, Marshall, and others have defined religion in terms of will. Their definitions, while inadequate, are useful as complements and correctives to the other definitions which emphasize the emotions or the intellect. They remind us that emotions and beliefs are of little consequence unless they lead to action of some sort and influence the life and conduct of the individual. In the words of Joad in Racine's "Athalie," "La foi qui n'agit point, est-ce une foi sincere?" As has often been said before, the bond between the feelings, the intellect, and the will are so close that we cannot stimulate any one without producing excitations in the other two.

In barbarous times true religious feeling and belief demanded for its satisfaction sacrifices, horrible mutilations, flagellations, and numerous other indescribable sufferings; in medieval times it produced bloody wars and revolutions, crusades, inquisitions, and reformations; in our own day it is the cause of missionary expeditions to every known corner of the globe, of much of the charitable and educational work carried on every day; and finally, it has always been at the bottom of the thousand and one religious rites and ceremonies performed in every age and land. The more one searches," writes Fielding Hall, "the more will he be sure that there is only one guide to a man's faith, to his soul, and that is not any book or system he may profess to believe, but the real system that he follows-that is to say that a man's beliefs can be known even to himself from his acts only. For

it is futile to say that a man believes in one thing and does another." According to Kant, religion arose from morals, and in his own mind the two could not be separated or even differentiated.

The religiosity of the sentimentalist is not true religion any more than are the mere beliefs of the philosopher, the dogmas of the theologian, or the acts of the moralist. To be religious one must love and worship his God with all his heart, and soul, and might. He must labor for His greater honor and glory, and be constantly guided in his actions by what he supposes to be his God's will and desire. In a passage of his treatise against the heretics, Calvin makes a fanatical, and what we should now consider an almost savage declaration, which, because of its very forcefulness, illustrates most lucidly what the fervent religious spirit is, or can be, when the occasion demands. It is similar to the one quoted from St. Jerome in the section of the first chapter dealing with Hate. Addressing himself to the "wretches" who wished to allow the heretics to go unpunished, he assures them that such is not the will of God. "It is not without cause," he tells them, "that God has destroyed all the human affections which have effeminated the heart. It is not without cause that he expels the love of the father for his children, the love of brothers and relatives, that he renders husbands immune to the flatteries and cajoleries of their wives; in short, that he strips men, so to speak, of their natures, in order that nothing may chill their zeal. Why does he require such an extreme, unyielding rigor, unless it is to show that one does not do Him the honor which one owes Him unless he prefers His service to every human regard, unless he spare neither parents, blood nor life, and unless he put himself in utter forgetfulness of all humanity whenever it is the question of fighting for His glory." Calvin was, of course, an enthusiast, but this is true in a greater or less degree of almost all religionists. Whatever we may think of some of the questions put until very recently by the Methodist examiners to the young candidate for the ministry, such as, 'Are you willing to be damned for the Lord?' etc., they indicate clearly that religious people regard that kind of religiosity which is unwilling or unable to express itself in deeds, of little worth. And this is as true of our ordinary secular experiences as of our religious ones.

1 The Soul of a People, p. 13.

The medieval knight-errant roamed about with a patch on his eye and a vow in his heart seeking to run a small course with any other knight for the greater love and honor of his lady, and even in these days of intellectual hypertrophy and emotional atrophy the love-sick swain, though much less artistic or fantastic in his manners and methods, is hardly less active in his efforts to win the favor of his fair dulcinea. Even among the lower animals, especially the domesticated ones, this relationship between the feelings and actions is often very beautifully expressed. Indeed so natural and indissoluble is this bond between feeling and action, that we often hear it asked, of what value is love or any feeling for that matter, if it does not lead to action? To which changing somewhat the dictum of St. James we may answer, “love without works is dead."

The relationship between belief and conduct. is equally as close. The ancients, believing that their gods delighted in sacrifice, and the greater the sacrifice the more acceptable it was, offered their own children on bloody altars; the Thugs committed murder for the same reason, the Jews put the Gentile nations to the sword, the Christian Church sanctioned the Crusades and Inquisitions, the Thibetan incessantly revolved his praying machine, the Catholic counted his beads, and missionaries to-day go into voluntary exile among savage peoples all because they believe that by so doing they are best worshipping their God. Indeed, if we were to repeat all that has heretofore been written we would not have begun to give a complete account of the relationship between belief and conduct. It is thus seen how inextricably interwoven are the feelings, intellect, and will; that it is only by abstraction that we can separate them, and by the method of concomitant variation determine the relative value of each, and the part it plays in the whole experience. In this chapter we shall deal with those religious experiences in which the volitional element predominates.

FANATICISM.

The very word fanaticism suggests immediately psychical abnormality, or frenzy, and excessive religious activity, and this in general is what it really is. It is the product of a strong will and weak or narrow mind, just as religious mysticism is frequently a product of the latter plus strong emo

tional feeling. The very fact that men devote their whole lives to religion and hold all other human interests and activities in contempt is sufficient proof of their psychical unbalance. The normal, well-rounded, and well-balanced individual has room in his life for human and worldly interests as well as for religion, but the narrow, unbalanced religionist has no place in his life for anything non-religious. We have already seen that this is true of the mystic, we shall now see that it is just as true of the religious fanatic.

"When devoutness is unbalanced," says James, "one of its vices is called Fanaticism. Fanaticism (when not a mere expression of ecclesiastical ambition) is only loyalty carried to a convulsive extreme. When an intensely loyal and narrow mind is once grasped by the feeling that a certain superhuman person is worthy of its exclusive devotion, one of the first things that happens is that it idealizes the devotion itself. To adequately realize the merits of the idol gets to be considered the one great merit of the worshipper; and the sacrifices and servilities by which savage tribesmen have from time immemorial exhibited their faithfulness to chieftans are now outbid in favor of the deity. Vocabularies are exhausted and languages altered in the attempt to praise him enough; death is looked on as a gain if it attract his grateful notice; and the personal attitude of being his devotee becomes what one might almost call a new and exalted kind of professional specialty within the tribe. "1

Vambéry, quoted by James, describes a dervish whom he met in Persia, who had solemnly vowed, thirty years before, that he would never employ his organs of speech otherwise but in uttering everlastingly the name of his favorite, Ali, Ali. He thus wished to signify to the world that he was the most devoted partisan of the Ali, who had been dead a thousand years. In his own home, speaking with his wife, children, and friends, no other word but 'Ali!' ever passed his lips. If he wanted food or drink, or anything else, he expressed his wants still, by repeating 'Ali!' Begging or buying at the bazaar, it was always 'Ali!' Treated ill or generously, he would still harp on his monotonous ‘Ali !' terly his zeal assumed such tremendous proportions that like a madman, he would race the whole day, up and down the streets of the town, throwing his stick high up into the air,

1 Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 341.

Lat

and shriek out all the while, at the top of his voice, 'Ali!'"'1 Ali himself, who has been called the Peter of Islam, sprang up when Mohammed asked of his few followers who would second him in his labors and become his vicegerent and Khalif (successor), and exclaimed: "I, O Apostle of God, will be thy minister. I will knock out the teeth, tear out the eyes, rip up the bellies, and cut off the legs of all who shall dare to oppose thee. "2

"An immediate consequence of this condition of mind,' continues James, "is jealousy for the deity's honor. How can the devotee show his loyalty better than by sensitiveness in this regard? The slightest affront or neglect must be resented, the deity's enemies must be put to shame. In exceedingly narrow minds and active wills, such a care may become an engrossing preoccupation; and crusades have been preached and massacres instigated for no other reason than to remove a fancied slight upon the God. Theologies representing the gods as mindful of their glory, and churches with imperialistic policies have conspired to fan this temper to a glow, so that intolerance and persecution have come to be vices associated by some of us inseparably with the saintly mind. They are unquestionably its besetting sins. . . The saintly temper is a moral temper and a moral temper has often to be cruel. It is a partisan temper and that is cruel. Between his own and Jehovah's enemies a David knows no difference; a Catherine of Sienna, panting to stop the warfare among Christians which was the scandal of her epoch, can think of no better method of union among them than a crusade to massacre the Turks; Luther finds no word of protest or regret over the atrocious tortures with which the Anabaptist leaders were put to death; and a Cromwell praises the Lord for delivering his enemies into his hands for execution.'"' 3

This lengthy quotation is a beautiful literary description of fanaticism, but it does not tell us what fanaticism is in itself; that is, it does not explain why the fanatic is ofttimes cruel, for example, and a partisan. A little further on, however, the writer probes deeper into the matter. "In theopathic characters, like those whom we have just considered, the love of God must not be mixed with any other love. Father and

1 Ibid., p. 341.

2P. DeLacy Johnstone: Muhammad, p. 64. 3 Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 342.