Chapter 2

The spring and harvest customs are closely allied to one another and may be arranged in four groups: (1) In Mexico they plainly consist of the worship of a god--by means of sacrifice and prayer--and of communion. {xx} (2) In some other cases, though the god has no proper or personal name, and no image is made of him, "the new corn," Dr. Frazer says, "is itself eaten sacramentally, that is, as the body of the corn spirit"; and it is by this sacramental meal that communion is effected or maintained. (3) In the harvest customs of northern Europe, bread and dumplings are made and eaten sacramentally, "as a substitute for the real flesh of the divine being"; or an animal is slain and its flesh and blood are partaken of. (4) Amongst the Australian tribes there is a sacramental eating of the totem animal or plant. Now, these four groups of customs may be all religious (and Dr. Frazer speaks of them all as sacramental) or all magical; or it may be admitted that the first three are religious, and maintained that the fourth is strictly magical. But such a separation of the Australian group from the rest does not commend itself as likely; further, it overlooks the fact that it is at the period analogous to harvest time that the headman eats solemnly and sparingly of the plant or animal, and that at harvest time it is too late to work magic to cause the plant or animal to grow. The probability is, then, that both the Australian group and the others are sacrificial rites and are religious.

Such sacrificial rites, however, though felt to be the means whereby communion was effected and maintained between the god and his worshippers, may come to be interpreted as the making of gifts to the god, as the means of purchasing his favour, or as a full discharge of their obligations. When so interpreted they will be denounced by true religion. But though it be admitted that the sacrificial rite might be made to bear this aspect, it does not follow, as is sometimes supposed, that it was from the outset incapable of bearing any other. On the contrary, it was, from the beginning, not only the rite of making offerings to the god but, also, the rite whereby communion was attained, whereby the society of worshippers was brought into the presence of the god they {xxi} worshipped, even though the chief benefits which the worshippers conceived themselves to receive were earthly blessings. It is because the rite had from the beginning this potentiality in it that it was possible for it to become the means whereby, through Christ, all men might be brought to God . . . 175-210

MORALITY

The question whether morality is based on religion, or religion on morality, is one which calls for discussion, inasmuch as it is apt to proceed on a mistaken view of facts in the history of religion. It is maintained that as a matter of history morality came first and religion afterwards; and that as a matter of philosophy religion presupposes morality. Reality, that is to say, is in the making; the spirit of man is self-realising; being is in process of becoming rationalised and moralised; religion in process of disappearing.

Early religion, it is said, is unethical: it has to do with spirits, which, as such, are not concerned with morality; with gods which are not ethical or ideal, and are not objects of worship in our sense of the term.

Now, the spirits which, in the period of animism, are believed to animate things, are not, it is true, concerned with morality; but then, neither are they gods. To be a god a spirit must have a community of worshippers; and it is as the protector of that community that he is worshipped. He protects the community against any individual member who violates the custom of the community. The custom of the community constitutes the morality of the society. Offences against that custom are offences against the god of the community. A god starts as an ethical power, and as an object of worship.

Still, it may be argued, before gods were, before religion was evolved, morality was; and this may be shown by the origin and nature of justice, which throughout is entirely independent of religion and religious {xxii} considerations. On this theory, the origin of justice is to be found in the resentment of the individual. But, first, the individual, apart from society, is an abstraction and an impossibility: the individual never exists apart from but always as a member of some society. Next, justice is not the resentment of any individual, but the sentiment of the community, expressing itself in the action not of any individual but of the community as such. The responsibility both for the wrong done and for righting it rests with the community. The earliest offences against which public action is taken are said to be witchcraft and breaches of the marriage laws. The latter are not injuries resented by any individual: they are offences against the gods and are punished to avert the misfortunes which otherwise would visit the tribe. Witchcraft is especially offensive to the god of the community.

In almost, if not quite, the lowest stages of human development, disease and famine are regarded as punishments which fall on the community as a whole, because the community, in the person of one of its members, has offended some supernatural power. In quite the lowest stage the guilt of the offending member is also regarded as capable of infecting the whole community; and he is, accordingly, avoided by the whole community and tabooed. Taboo is due to the collective action, and expresses the collective feeling of the community as a whole. It is from such collective action and feeling that justice has been evolved and not from individual resentment, which is still and always was something different from justice. The offences punished by the community have always been considered, so far as they are offences against morality, to be offences against the gods of the community. The fact that in course of time such offences come to be punished always as militating against the good of society testifies merely to the general assumption that the good of man is the will of God: men do not believe that murder, adultery, etc., are merely offences {xxiii} against man's laws. It is only by ignoring this patent fact that it becomes possible to maintain that religion is built upon morality, and that we are discovering religion to be a superfluous superstructure.

It may be argued that the assumption that murder, adultery, etc., are offences against God's will is a mere assumption, and that in making the assumption we are fleeing "to the bosom of faith." The reply is that we are content not merely to flee but to rest there . . . 211-238

CHRISTIANITY

If we are to understand the place of Christianity in the evolution of religion, we must consider the place of religion in the evolution of humanity; and I must explain the point of view from which I propose to approach the three ideas of (1) evolution, (2) the evolution of humanity, (3) the evolution of religion.

I wish to approach the idea of evolution from the proposition that the individual is both a means by which society attains its end, and an end for the sake of which society exists. Utilitarianism has familiarised us with the view that society exists for the sake of the individual and for the purpose of realising the happiness and good of every individual: no man is to be treated merely as a chattel, existing solely as a means whereby his owner, or the governing class, may benefit. But this aspect of the facts is entirely ignored by the scientific theory of evolution: according to that theory, the individual exists only as a factor in the process of evolution, as one of the means by which, and not as in any sense the end for which, the process is carried on.

Next, this aspect of the facts is ignored not only by the scientific theory of evolution, but also by the theory which humanitarianism holds as to the evolution of humanity, viz. that it is a process moving through the three stages of custom, religion, and humanitarianism. That process is still, as it has long been in the past, far from complete: {xxiv} the end is not yet. It is an end in which, whenever and if ever realised on earth, we who are now living shall not live to partake: we are--on this theory of the evolution of humanity--means, and solely means, to an end which, when realised, we shall not partake in. Being an end in which we cannot participate, it is not an end which can be rationally set up for us to strive to attain. Nor will the generation, which is ultimately to enjoy it, find much satisfaction in reflecting that their enjoyment has been purchased at the cost of others. To treat a minority of individuals as the end for which humanity is evolved, and the majority as merely means, is a strange pass for humanitarianism to come to.

Approaching the evolution of religion from the point of view that the individual must always be regarded both as an end and as a means, we find that Buddhism denies the individual to be either the one or the other, for his very existence is an illusion, and an illusion which must be dispelled, in order that he may cease from an existence which it is an illusion to imagine that he possesses. If, however, we turn to other religions less highly developed than Buddhism, we find that, in all, the existence of the individual as well as of the god of the community is assumed; that the interests of the community are the will of the community's god; that the interests of the community are higher than the interests of the individual, when they appear to differ; and that the man who prefers the interests of the community to his own is regarded as the higher type of man. In fine, the individual, from this point of view, acts voluntarily as the means whereby the end of society may be realised. And, in so acting, he testifies to his conviction that he will thereby realise his own end.

Throughout the history of religion these two facts are implied: first, the existence of the individual as a member of society seeking communion with God; next, the existence of society as a means of which the individual is {xxv} the end. Hence two consequences with regard to evolution: first, evolution may have helped to make us, but we are helping to make it; next, the end of evolution is not wholly outside any one of us, but in part is realised in us. And it is just because the end is both within us and without us that we are bound up with our fellow-man and God.

Whether the process of evolution is moving to any end whatever, is a question which science declines--formally refuses--to consider. Whether the end at which religion aims is possible or not, has in any degree been achieved or not, is a question which the science of religion formally declines to consider. If, however, we recognise that the end of religion, viz. communion with God, is an end at which we ought to aim, then the process whereby the end tends to be attained is no longer evolution in the scientific sense. It is a process in which progress may or may not be made. As a fact, the missionary everywhere sees arrested development, imperfect communion with God; for the different forms of religion realise the end of religion in different degrees. Christianity claims to be "final," not in the chronological sense, but in that it alone finds the true basis and the only end of society in the love of God. The Christian theory of society again differs from all other theories in that it not only regards the individuals composing it as continuing to exist after death, but teaches that the society of which the individual is truly a member, though it manifests itself in this world, is realised in the next.

The history of religion is the history of man's search for God. That search depends for its success, in part, upon man's will. Christianity cannot be stationary: the extent to which we push our missionary outposts forward gives us the measure of our vitality. And in that respect, as in others, the vitality of the United States is great . . . 239-265

APPENDIX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266 _ad fin._

{1}

INTRODUCTION

Of the many things that fill a visitor from the old country with admiration, on his first visit to the United States, that which arrests his attention most frequently, is the extent and success with which science is applied to practical purposes. And it is beginning to dawn upon me that in the United States it is not only pure science which is thus practically applied,--the pure sciences of mechanics, physics, mathematics,--but that the historic sciences also are expected to justify themselves by their practical application; and that amongst the historic sciences not even the science of religion is exempted from the common lot. It also may be useful; and had better be so,--if any one is to have any use for it. It must make itself useful to the man who has practical need of its results and wishes to apply them--the missionary. He it is who, for the practical purposes of the work to which he is called, requires an applied science of religion; and Hartford {2} Theological Seminary may, I believe, justly claim to be the first institution in the world which has deliberately and consciously set to work to create by the courses of lectures, of which this series is the very humble beginning, an applied science of religion.

How, then, will the applied science differ from the pure science of religion? In one way it will not differ: an applied science does not sit in judgment upon the pure science on which it is based; it accepts the truths which the pure science presents to all the world, and bases itself upon them. The business of pure science is to discover facts; that of the applied science is to use them. The business of the science of religion is to discover all the facts necessary if we are to understand the growth and history of religion. The business of the applied science is, in our case, to use the discovered facts as a means of showing that Christianity is the highest manifestation of the religious spirit.

In dealing with the applied science, then, we recover a liberty which the pure science does not enjoy. The science of religion is a historic science. Its student looks back upon the past; {3} and looks back upon it with a single purpose, that of discovering what, as a matter of fact, did happen, what was the order in which the events occurred. In so looking back he may, and does, see many things which he could wish had not occurred; but he has no power to alter them; he has no choice but to record them; and his duty, his single duty, is to ascertain the historic facts and to establish the historic truth. With the applied science the case is very different. There the student sets his face to the future, no longer to the past. The truths of pure science are the weapons placed in his hand with which he is to conquer the world. It is in the faith that the armour provided him by science is sure and will not fail him that he addresses himself to his chosen work. The implements are set in his hands. The liberty is his to employ them for what end he will. That liberty is a consequence of the fact that the student's object no longer is to ascertain the past, but to make the future.

The business of the pure science is to ascertain the facts and state the truth. To what use the facts and truth are afterwards put, is a question with which the pure science has nothing to do. {4} The same facts may be put to very different uses: from the same facts very different conclusions may be drawn. The facts which the science of religion establishes may be used and are used for different and for contradictory purposes. The man who is agnostic or atheist uses them to support his atheism or agnosticism; or even, if he is so unwise, to prove it. The man who has religion is equally at liberty to use them in his support; and if he rarely does that, at any rate he still more rarely commits the mistake of imagining that the science of religion proves the truth of his particular views on the subject of religion. Indeed, his tendency is rather in the opposite direction: he is unreasonably uneasy and apt to have a disquieting alarm lest the science of religion may really be a danger to religion. This alarm may very naturally arise when he discovers that to the scientific student one religion is as another, and the question is indifferent whether there is any truth in any form. It is very easy to jump from these facts to the erroneous conclusion that science of religion is wholly incompatible with religious belief. And of course it is quite human and perfectly intelligible that that conclusion should be proclaimed aloud as correct {5} and inevitable by the man who, being an atheist, fights for what he feels to be the truth.

We must, therefore, once more insist upon the simple fact that science of religion abstains necessarily from assuming either that religion is true or is not true. What it does assume is what no one will deny, viz. that religion is a fact. Religious beliefs may be right or they may be wrong: but they exist. Therefore they can be studied, described, classified, placed in order of development, and treated as a branch of sociology and as one department of the evolution of the world. And all this can be done without once asking the question whether religious belief is true and right and good, or not. Whether it is pronounced true or false by you or me, will not in the least shake the fact that it has existed for thousands of years, that it has had a history during that period, and that that history may be written. We may have doubts whether the institution of private property is a good thing, or whether barter and exchange are desirable proceedings. But we shall not doubt that private property exists or that it may be exchanged. And we shall not imagine that the science of political economy, which deals, among other {6} things with the production and exchange of wealth which is private property, makes any pronouncement whatever on the question whether private property is or is not an institution which we ought to support and believe in. The conclusions established by the science of political economy are set forth before the whole world; and men may use them for what purpose they will. They may and do draw very different inferences from them, even contradictory inferences. But if they do, it is because they use them for different ends or contradictory purposes. And the fact that the communist or socialist uses political economy to support his views no more proves that socialism is the logical consequence of political economy than the fact that the atheist uses or misuses, for his own purposes, the conclusions of the science of religion proves his inferences to be the logical outcome of the science.

The science of religion deals essentially with the one fact that religion has existed and does exist. It is from that fact that the missionary will start; and it is with men who do not question the fact that he will have to do. The science of religion seeks to trace the historic growth, the evolution of religion; to establish what actually was, not to {7} judge what ought to have been,--science knows no "ought," in that sense or rather in that tense, the past tense. Its work is done, its last word has been said, when it has demonstrated what was. It is the heart which sighs to think what might have been, and which puts on it a higher value than it does on what actually came to pass. There is then another order in which facts may be ranged besides the chronological order in which historically they occurred; and that is the order of their value. It is an order in which we do range facts, whenever we criticise them. It is the order in which we range them, whenever we pass judgment on them. Or, rather, passing judgment on them is placing them in the order of their value. And the chronological order of their occurrence is quite a different thing from the order in which we rank them when we judge them according to their value and importance. It is, or rather it would be, quite absurd to say, in the case of literature, or art, for instance, that the two orders are identical. There it is obvious and universally admitted that one period may reach a higher level than another which in point of time is later. The classical period is followed by a post-classical period; culmination is followed by decline. {8} Now, this difference in point of the literary or artistic value of two periods is as real and as fundamental as the time order or chronological relation of the two periods. It would be patently ridiculous for any ardent maintainer of the importance of distinguishing between good literature and bad, good art and bad art, to say that the one period, being good, must have been chronologically prior to the other, because, from the point of art, it was better than that other. Every one can see that. The chronological order, the historic order, is one thing; the order of literary value or artistic importance is another. But if this is granted, and every one will grant it, then it is also, and thereby, granted that the historic order of events is not the same thing as the order of their value, and is no guide to it. Thus far I have illustrated these remarks by reference to literary and artistic values. But I need hardly say that I have been thinking really all the time of religious values. If the student of literature or of art surveys the history of art and literature with the purpose of judging the value of the works produced, the student of religion may and must survey the history of religion with the same purpose. If the one student is entitled, as he {9} justly is entitled, to say that the difference between the literary or artistic value of two periods is as real and as fundamental as is their difference in the order of time, then the student of religion is claiming no exceptional or suspicious privilege for himself. He is claiming no privilege at all; he is but exercising the common rights of all students like himself, when he points out that differences in religious values are just as real and just as fundamental as the historic or chronological order itself.

The assignment of values, then,--be it the assignment of the value of works of art, literature, or religion,--is a proceeding which is not only possible (as will be somewhat contemptuously admitted by those who believe that evolution is progress, and that there is no order of value distinct from the order of history and chronological succession); the assignment of value is not only permissible (as may be admitted by those who believe, or for want of thought fancy they believe, that the historic order of events is the only order which can really exist), it is absolutely inevitable. It is the concomitant or rather an integral part of every act of perception. Everything that we perceive is either dismissed from attention because it is judged at the moment to have {10} no value, or, if it has value, attention is concentrated upon it.