What is the way to get a religion? We know, at all events, what cannot
be the way. It cannot be to prostrate our intellects before the throne
of authority; to bind the Samson within us, the human mind, and deliver
him into the hands of the Philistines; to abjure our reason. Whatever
religion we adopt must be consistent with the truths with which
we have been enriched at the hands of science. It may be
ultra-scientific--indeed, it must be; but it may not be anti-scientific.
But, on the other hand, we need to be equally warned against expecting
too much from the intellect. One cannot attain religion merely by
trying, in his closet, to think out the problems of the universe.
It is a mistake to approach the subject of religion from the point of
view of philosophy. All really religious persons declare that religion
is, primarily, a matter of experience. We must get a certain kind of
experience, and then philosophic thinking will be of use to us in
explicating what is implicated in that experience. But we must get the
experience first.
The undulatory theory would not help any one to know what light is who
had never seen light, and the chemical formula for water would not help
any one to know what water is who had never tasted it. To know light one
must see it; to know water one must taste it. So, too, philosophy will
not help any one to know what religion is.
The experience of religion is not reserved for the initiated and elect,
it is accessible to every one who chooses to have it.
The experience to which I refer is essentially moral experience. It may
be described as a sense of subjection to imperious impulses which urge
our finite nature toward infinite issues; a sense of propulsions which
we can resist, but not disown; a sense of a power greater than
ourselves, with which, nevertheless, in essence we are one; a sense, in
times of moral stress, of channels opened by persistent effort, which
let in a flood of rejuvenating energy and put us in command of
unsuspected moral resources; a sense, finally, of the complicity of our
life with the life of others, of living in them in no merely
metaphorical signification of the word; of unity with all spiritual
being whatsoever.
A religion which is to satisfy us must be a religion of progress. But we
must be progressive ourselves if we are to have faith in progress. We
must be constantly developing if we are to have faith in unbounded
further development. And especially we must be progressing in a moral
direction.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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