WHAT RELIGION IS.
What, then, is religion? Do any of the definitions given at the
beginning explain what it really is? Is it a theory of the universe, is
it morality, is it future rewards and punishments? It may be all or none
of these things. Is it creeds, dogmas, speculations, or theories of any
kind? It is none of these things.
Religion is the recognition and cultivation of our highest emotions, of
our more beautiful instincts, of all that we know is best in us.
What these emotions may be varies in each people according to their
natures, their circumstances, their stage of civilisation. In the Latins
some emotions predominate, in the Teutons others, in the Hindus yet
others. Each race of men has its own garden wherein grow flowers that
are not found elsewhere, and of these they make their faiths.
Some of these emotions I have tried to show in this book. For the Latins
they are the emotions of fatherhood, of prayer, and confession, of
sacrifice and atonement, of motherhood, of art and beauty, of obedience,
of rule, of mercy, of forgiveness, of the resurrection of the body, of
prayer for the dead, of strong self-denial and asceticism, of many
others; but those, I think, are the chief.
For the Protestant, the more rigid Protestant, it is the cultivation of
the emotions of force, grandeur, prayer, justice, conduct, punishment of
evil, austerity, and also many others.
With the Burman Buddhist it is the recognition and cultivation of the
beauties of freedom, peace, calm, rigid self-denial, charity in thought
and deed to all the world, pity to animals, the existence of the soul
before and after death, with no reference to any particular body. The
Mahommedan has for one of his principal emotions courage in battle, and
the Hindu cleanliness of body and purity of race.
These things are religions. Out of his strongest feelings has man built
up his faiths.
And the creeds are but the theories of the keener intellects of the race
to explain, and codify, and organise the cultivation of these feelings.
Creeds are not religions, nor are religions proved by miracle or by
prophecy, by evidence, or any reasoning of any kind. The instincts are
innate or do not exist at all. Like all emotions and feelings, they
cannot be created or destroyed by reason.
Why does a man fall in love? No one knows. And if he fall in love, can
you cure him of it by argument? Would it be any use to say to him? "The
girl you love is not beautiful, is not clever; she would be of no use to
you, she does not return your love at all. You cannot really love her."
He would only laugh and say, "All that may be true, and yet the fact
remains unaltered. She is the woman I love. My reason may prevent my
marrying her, it cannot prevent my love. And you may be right that this
other woman has all the virtues, but I have no love for her." So it is
with all the emotions. You either have them or have not. You do not
reason about them. Reason is of things we doubt, not of things we know.
Therefore are the beliefs of one religion incomprehensible to the
believers in another. Nothing is so difficult to understand as an
emotion you have not felt. What is perfect beauty to one man is stark
ugliness to another. So it is with religion. To understand well the
faith you must have in you all the chords that these faiths draw music
from, and how many have that?
Religion is of the heart, not of the reason. Theologians of all creeds
warn the believer against reason as a snare of the devil. A freethinker
must be an Atheist. History is one long conflict between religion and
science. But why is this, if they have no concern one with another? Why
fight, why not exist together?
Because all men, freethinkers as well as theologians, have failed to see
what religion really consists in. They think it is in the theories of
creation, of God, of salvation, of heaven and hell. They look one and
all to the creeds and dogmas as religion.
And none of these creeds and dogmas will, as a whole, stand criticism.
They fall before the thinker into irretrievable ruin, and therefore the
freethinker imagines he has destroyed religion. But religion lives on,
and he wonders why. He puts it down to the blindness of men. The
theologian rejoices because the continued life of religion seems to him
the vindication of the creeds. Yet are they both wrong. Men are not
fools, nor does religion live by the truth of its creeds. The whole
initial idea has been mistaken. The creeds are but theories to explain
religion. Scientific men have invented the ether and theories connected
with it to explain heat and light and electricity. These theories are
good now, and are universally accepted, but they are not proved.
Supposing a hundred years hence wider perception and new facts should
throw great doubts on whether ether exists at all as supposed, or on the
present theories of heat and electricity? Suppose, too, that the old
school scientists are stubborn and refuse to meet these new thoughts?
What will the sensible man do? Will he say, "This theory of ether waves
is untenable, exploded, foolish, and therefore I will believe it no
longer; and as the theory is wrong, so too the phenomena of the theory
are all imaginations. There are no such things as heat and light, and I
will not warm myself in the sun." Would that be sense? I think reason
would reply, "I am sorry the old theories are gone. They were true while
they lasted. But now they are dead, and we have not found new ones. Yet
if the theory be dead, the facts are still there. The sun still shines,
and we have heat and light. These things are true. No man shall frighten
me and say, 'If you will not believe our science you shall not warm
yourself at our sun. You shall not light your fire or your lamp unless
you admit ether waves.' Perhaps a new theory may arise. But anyhow I
have the sun yet, and my lamp is not broken. They are facts still."
That is exactly the present position as regards many faiths. The creeds
are theories to explain facts. The theories are very old and we have
grown out of them. The theologians will not surrender them, clinging to
them in the imagination that they really are religion, and that without
them religion will fall, conjuring with words to try and support them.
What should reason say in the face of this? "I do not believe in your
theories of God and the future state, and the resurrection of the body,
and so on, and therefore I won't have anything to do with any religion."
Would that be reason? Yes, if you believe the creeds are religion; no,
if you believe that religion lies far deeper than creeds. Or to use
another simile: the creeds are the grammar of religion, they are to
religion what grammar is to speech. Words are the expression of our
wants; grammar is the theory formed afterwards. Speech never proceeded
from grammar, but the reverse. As speech progresses and changes from
unknown causes, grammar must follow. But if not? If grammarians are
hide-bound, are we to refuse to talk? In this latter case, if the reason
were mine, I think reason would say, "Bother these theologians, their
dogmas and creeds, their theories and grammars, what do they matter? The
instinct of prayer remains, of confession, of sacrifice. They appeal to
me still. They fill my heart with beauty. Shall I refuse to accept the
glories of life, shall I refuse to cultivate my soul because some people
who claim authority have theories about these things with which I don't
agree? Not all the creeds nor theologians in the world shall prevent my
making the best of myself. The garden of the soul is no close preserve
of theirs.
"Religion is the satisfaction of some of the wants of the souls of men.
It is a cult of some of the emotions, never of all. For the emotions are
so varied, so contradictory, that all cannot live together. I do not
quite know why one people includes one emotion in religion and another
rejects it out of religion, while still maintaining its beauty and
truth. But no religion includes more than one side of life. There are
others. I, too, will cultivate these emotions which I need. But this I
will not forget, that life has many sides. Life has many emotions, and
all are good, though all may not come into religion. There is ambition,
there is love of gaiety, of humour, of laughter, there is courage and
pride, the glory of success. To live life whole none must be neglected.
They are planted in our hearts for some good purpose. I will not weed
them out. My garden shall grow all the flowers it can, and reason shall
be the gardener to see that none grow rank and choke the others.
"Whatever things are beautiful, that make the heart to beat and the eye
grow dim, whatever I know to be good, that shall I have. 'For that which
toucheth the heart is beautiful to the eye.'"