original factor in fixing the figure of the gods must always have been
psychological. The deity to whom the prophets, seers, and devotees who
founded the particular cult bore witness was worth something to them
personally. They could use him. He guided their imagination, warranted
their hopes, and controlled their will,—or else they required him as a
safeguard against the demon and a curber of other people’s crimes. In any
case, they chose him for the value of the fruits he seemed to them to
yield. So soon as the fruits began to seem quite worthless; so soon as
they conflicted with indispensable human ideals, or thwarted too
extensively other values; so soon as they appeared childish, contemptible,
or immoral when reflected on, the deity grew discredited, and was erelong
neglected and forgotten. It was in this way that the Greek and Roman gods
ceased to be believed in by educated pagans; it is thus that we ourselves
judge of the Hindu, Buddhist, and Mohammedan theologies; Protestants have
so dealt with the Catholic notions of deity, and liberal Protestants with
older Protestant notions; it is thus that Chinamen judge of us, and that
all of us now living will be judged by our descendants. When we cease to
admire or approve what the definition of a deity implies, we end by
deeming that deity incredible.
Few historic changes are more curious than these mutations of theological
opinion. The monarchical type of sovereignty was, for example, so
ineradicably planted in the mind of our own forefathers that a dose of
cruelty and arbitrariness in their deity seems positively to have been
required by their imagination. They called the cruelty “retributive
justice,” and a God without it would certainly have struck them as not
“sovereign” enough. But to‐day we abhor the very notion of eternal
suffering inflicted; and that arbitrary dealing‐out of salvation and
damnation to selected individuals, of which Jonathan Edwards could
persuade himself that he had not only a conviction, but a “delightful
conviction,” as of a doctrine “exceeding pleasant, bright, and sweet,”
appears to us, if sovereignly anything, sovereignly irrational and mean.
Not only the cruelty, but the paltriness of character of the gods believed
in by earlier centuries also strikes later centuries with surprise. We
shall see examples of it from the annals of Catholic saintship which make
us rub our Protestant eyes. Ritual worship in general appears to the
modern transcendentalist, as well as to the ultra‐puritanic type of mind,
as if addressed to a deity of an almost absurdly childish character,
taking delight in toy‐shop furniture, tapers and tinsel, costume and
mumbling and mummery, and finding his “glory” incomprehensibly enhanced
thereby;—just as on the other hand the formless spaciousness of pantheism
appears quite empty to ritualistic natures, and the gaunt theism of
evangelical sects seems intolerably bald and chalky and bleak. Luther,
says Emerson, would have cut off his right hand rather than nail his
theses to the door at Wittenberg, if he had supposed that they were
destined to lead to the pale negations of Boston Unitarianism.
So far, then, although we are compelled, whatever may be our pretensions
to empiricism, to employ some sort of a standard of theological
probability of our own whenever we assume to estimate the fruits of other
men’s religion, yet this very standard has been begotten out of the drift
of common life. It is the voice of human experience within us, judging and
condemning all gods that stand athwart the pathway along which it feels
itself to be advancing. Experience, if we take it in the largest sense, is
thus the parent of those disbeliefs which, it was charged, were
inconsistent with the experiential method. The inconsistency, you see, is
immaterial, and the charge may be neglected.
If we pass from disbeliefs to positive beliefs, it seems to me that there
is not even a formal inconsistency to be laid against our method. The gods
we stand by are the gods we need and can use, the gods whose demands on us
are reinforcements of our demands on ourselves and on one another. What I
then propose to do is, briefly stated, to test saintliness by common
sense, to use human standards to help us decide how far the religious life
commends itself as an ideal kind of human activity. If it commends itself,
then any theological beliefs that may inspire it, in so far forth will
stand accredited. If not, then they will be discredited, and all without
reference to anything but human working principles. It is but the
elimination of the humanly unfit, and the survival of the humanly fittest,
applied to religious beliefs; and if we look at history candidly and
without prejudice, we have to admit that no religion has ever in the long
run established or proved itself in any other way. Religions have
_approved_ themselves; they have ministered to sundry vital needs which
they found reigning. When they violated other needs too strongly, or when
other faiths came which served the same needs better, the first religions
were supplanted.
The needs were always many, and the tests were never sharp. So the
reproach of vagueness and subjectivity and “on the whole”‐ness, which can
with perfect legitimacy be addressed to the empirical method as we are
forced to use it, is after all a reproach to which the entire life of man
in dealing with these matters is obnoxious. No religion has ever yet owed
its prevalence to “apodictic certainty.” In a later lecture I will ask
whether objective certainty can ever be added by theological reasoning to
a religion that already empirically prevails.
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One word, also, about the reproach that in following this sort of an
empirical method we are handing ourselves over to systematic skepticism.
Since it is impossible to deny secular alterations in our sentiments and
needs, it would be absurd to affirm that one’s own age of the world can be
beyond correction by the next age. Skepticism cannot, therefore, be ruled
out by any set of thinkers as a possibility against which their
conclusions are secure; and no empiricist ought to claim exemption from
this universal liability. But to admit one’s liability to correction is
one thing, and to embark upon a sea of wanton doubt is another. Of
willfully playing into the hands of skepticism we cannot be accused. He
who acknowledges the imperfectness of his instrument, and makes allowance
for it in discussing his observations, is in a much better position for
gaining truth than if he claimed his instrument to be infallible. Or is
dogmatic or scholastic theology less doubted in point of fact for
claiming, as it does, to be in point of right undoubtable? And if not,
what command over truth would this kind of theology really lose if,
instead of absolute certainty, she only claimed reasonable probability for
her conclusions? If _we_ claim only reasonable probability, it will be as
much as men who love the truth can ever at any given moment hope to have
within their grasp. Pretty surely it will be more than we could have had,
if we were unconscious of our liability to err.
Nevertheless, dogmatism will doubtless continue to condemn us for this
confession. The mere outward form of inalterable certainty is so precious
to some minds that to renounce it explicitly is for them out of the
question. They will claim it even where the facts most patently pronounce
its folly. But the safe thing is surely to recognize that all the insights
of creatures of a day like ourselves must be provisional. The wisest of
critics is an altering being, subject to the better insight of the morrow,
and right at any moment, only “up to date” and “on the whole.” When larger
ranges of truth open, it is surely best to be able to open ourselves to
their reception, unfettered by our previous pretensions. “Heartily know,
when half‐gods go, the gods arrive.”
The fact of diverse judgments about religious phenomena is therefore
entirely unescapable, whatever may be one’s own desire to attain the
irreversible. But apart from that fact, a more fundamental question awaits
us, the question whether men’s opinions ought to be expected to be
absolutely uniform in this field. Ought all men to have the same religion?
Ought they to approve the same fruits and follow the same leadings? Are
they so like in their inner needs that, for hard and soft, for proud and
humble, for strenuous and lazy, for healthy‐minded and despairing, exactly
the same religious incentives are required? Or are different functions in
the organism of humanity allotted to different types of man, so that some
may really be the better for a religion of consolation and reassurance,
whilst others are better for one of terror and reproof? It might
conceivably be so; and we shall, I think, more and more suspect it to be
so as we go on. And if it be so, how can any possible judge or critic help
being biased in favor of the religion by which his own needs are best met?
He aspires to impartiality; but he is too close to the struggle not to be
to some degree a participant, and he is sure to approve most warmly those
fruits of piety in others which taste most good and prove most nourishing
to _him_.
I am well aware of how anarchic much of what I say may sound. Expressing
myself thus abstractly and briefly, I may seem to despair of the very
notion of truth. But I beseech you to reserve your judgment until we see
it applied to the details which lie before us. I do indeed disbelieve that
we or any other mortal men can attain on a given day to absolutely
incorrigible and unimprovable truth about such matters of fact as those
with which religions deal. But I reject this dogmatic ideal not out of a
perverse delight in intellectual instability. I am no lover of disorder
and doubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to
possess it already wholly. That we can gain more and more of it by moving
always in the right direction, I believe as much as any one, and I hope to
bring you all to my way of thinking before the termination of these
lectures. Till then, do not, I pray you, harden your minds irrevocably
against the empiricism which I profess.
I will waste no more words, then, in abstract justification of my method,
but seek immediately to use it upon the facts.
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In critically judging of the value of religious phenomena, it is very
important to insist on the distinction between religion as an individual
personal function, and religion as an institutional, corporate, or tribal
product. I drew this distinction, you may remember, in my second lecture.
The word “religion,” as ordinarily used, is equivocal. A survey of history
shows us that, as a rule, religious geniuses attract disciples, and
produce groups of sympathizers. When these groups get strong enough to
“organize” themselves, they become ecclesiastical institutions with
corporate ambitions of their own. The spirit of politics and the lust of
dogmatic rule are then apt to enter and to contaminate the originally
innocent thing; so that when we hear the word “religion” nowadays, we
think inevitably of some “church” or other; and to some persons the word
“church” suggests so much hypocrisy and tyranny and meanness and tenacity
of superstition that in a wholesale undiscerning way they glory in saying
that they are “down” on religion altogether. Even we who belong to
churches do not exempt other churches than our own from the general
condemnation.
But in this course of lectures ecclesiastical institutions hardly concern
us at all. The religious experience which we are studying is that which
lives itself out within the private breast. First‐hand individual
experience of this kind has always appeared as a heretical sort of
innovation to those who witnessed its birth. Naked comes it into the world
and lonely; and it has always, for a time at least, driven him who had it
into the wilderness, often into the literal wilderness out of doors, where
the Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, St. Francis, George Fox, and so many others
had to go. George Fox expresses well this isolation; and I can do no
better at this point than read to you a page from his Journal, referring
to the period of his youth when religion began to ferment within him
seriously.
“I fasted much,” Fox says, “walked abroad in solitary places many
days, and often took my Bible, and sat in hollow trees and
lonesome places until night came on; and frequently in the night
walked mournfully about by myself; for I was a man of sorrows in
the time of the first workings of the Lord in me.
“During all this time I was never joined in profession of religion
with any, but gave up myself to the Lord, having forsaken all evil
company, taking leave of father and mother, and all other
relations, and traveled up and down as a stranger on the earth,
which way the Lord inclined my heart; taking a chamber to myself
in the town where I came, and tarrying sometimes more, sometimes
less in a place: for I durst not stay long in a place, being
afraid both of professor and profane, lest, being a tender young
man, I should be hurt by conversing much with either. For which
reason I kept much as a stranger, seeking heavenly wisdom and
getting knowledge from the Lord; and was brought off from outward
things, to rely on the Lord alone. As I had forsaken the priests,
so I left the separate preachers also, and those called the most
experienced people; for I saw there was none among them all that
could speak to my condition. And when all my hopes in them and in
all men were gone so that I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor
could tell what to do; then, oh then, I heard a voice which said,
‘There is one, even Jesus Christ, that can speak to thy
condition.’ When I heard it, my heart did leap for joy. Then the
Lord let me see why there was none upon the earth that could speak
to my condition. I had not fellowship with any people, priests,
nor professors, nor any sort of separated people. I was afraid of
all carnal talk and talkers, for I could see nothing but
corruptions. When I was in the deep, under all shut up, I could
not believe that I should ever overcome; my troubles, my sorrows,
and my temptations were so great that I often thought I should
have despaired, I was so tempted. But when Christ opened to me how
he was tempted by the same devil, and had overcome him, and had
bruised his head; and that through him and his power, life, grace,
and spirit, I should overcome also, I had confidence in him. If I
had had a king’s diet, palace, and attendance, all would have been
as nothing; for nothing gave me comfort but the Lord by his power.
I saw professors, priests, and people were whole and at ease in
that condition which was my misery, and they loved that which I
would have been rid of. But the Lord did stay my desires upon
himself, and my care was cast upon him alone.”(197)
A genuine first‐hand religious experience like this is bound to be a
heterodoxy to its witnesses, the prophet appearing as a mere lonely
madman. If his doctrine prove contagious enough to spread to any others,
it becomes a definite and labeled heresy. But if it then still prove
contagious enough to triumph over persecution, it becomes itself an
orthodoxy; and when a religion has become an orthodoxy, its day of
inwardness is over: the spring is dry; the faithful live at second hand
exclusively and stone the prophets in their turn. The new church, in spite
of whatever human goodness it may foster, can be henceforth counted on as
a staunch ally in every attempt to stifle the spontaneous religious
spirit, and to stop all later bubblings of the fountain from which in
purer days it drew its own supply of inspiration. Unless, indeed, by
adopting new movements of the spirit it can make capital out of them and
use them for its selfish corporate designs! Of protective action of this
politic sort, promptly or tardily decided on, the dealings of the Roman
ecclesiasticism with many individual saints and prophets yield examples
enough for our instruction.
The plain fact is that men’s minds are built, as has been often said, in
water‐tight compartments. Religious after a fashion, they yet have many
other things in them beside their religion, and unholy entanglements and
associations inevitably obtain. The basenesses so commonly charged to
religion’s account are thus, almost all of them, not chargeable at all to
religion proper, but rather to religion’s wicked practical partner, the
spirit of corporate dominion. And the bigotries are most of them in their
turn chargeable to religion’s wicked intellectual partner, the spirit of
dogmatic dominion, the passion for laying down the law in the form of an
absolutely closed‐in theoretic system. The ecclesiastical spirit in
general is the sum of these two spirits of dominion; and I beseech you
never to confound the phenomena of mere tribal or corporate psychology
which it presents with those manifestations of the purely interior life
which are the exclusive object of our study. The baiting of Jews, the
hunting of Albigenses and Waldenses, the stoning of Quakers and ducking of
Methodists, the murdering of Mormons and the massacring of Armenians,
express much rather that aboriginal human neophobia, that pugnacity of
which we all share the vestiges, and that inborn hatred of the alien and
of eccentric and non‐conforming men as aliens, than they express the
positive piety of the various perpetrators. Piety is the mask, the inner
force is tribal instinct. You believe as little as I do, in spite of the
Christian unction with which the German emperor addressed his troops upon
their way to China, that the conduct which he suggested, and in which
other Christian armies went beyond them, had anything whatever to do with
the interior religious life of those concerned in the performance.
Well, no more for past atrocities than for this atrocity should we make
piety responsible. At most we may blame piety for not availing to check
our natural passions, and sometimes for supplying them with hypocritical
pretexts. But hypocrisy also imposes obligations, and with the pretext
usually couples some restriction; and when the passion gust is over, the
piety may bring a reaction of repentance which the irreligious natural man
would not have shown.
For many of the historic aberrations which have been laid to her charge,
religion as such, then, is not to blame. Yet of the charge that over‐
zealousness or fanaticism is one of her liabilities we cannot wholly
acquit her, so I will next make a remark upon that point. But I will
preface it by a preliminary remark which connects itself with much that
follows.
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Our survey of the phenomena of saintliness has unquestionably produced in
your minds an impression of extravagance. Is it necessary, some of you
have asked, as one example after another came before us, to be quite so
fantastically good as that? We who have no vocation for the extremer
ranges of sanctity will surely be let off at the last day if our humility,
asceticism, and devoutness prove of a less convulsive sort. This
practically amounts to saying that much that it is legitimate to admire in
this field need nevertheless not be imitated, and that religious
phenomena, like all other human phenomena, are subject to the law of the
golden mean. Political reformers accomplish their successive tasks in the
history of nations by being blind for the time to other causes. Great
schools of art work out the effects which it is their mission to reveal,
at the cost of a one‐sidedness for which other schools must make amends.
We accept a John Howard, a Mazzini, a Botticelli, a Michael Angelo, with a
kind of indulgence. We are glad they existed to show us that way, but we
are glad there are also other ways of seeing and taking life. So of many
of the saints whom we have looked at. We are proud of a human nature that
could be so passionately extreme, but we shrink from advising others to
follow the example. The conduct we blame ourselves for not following lies
nearer to the middle line of human effort. It is less dependent on
particular beliefs and doctrines. It is such as wears well in different
ages, such as under different skies all judges are able to commend.
The fruits of religion, in other words, are, like all human products,
liable to corruption by excess. Common sense must judge them. It need not
blame the votary; but it may be able to praise him only conditionally, as
one who acts faithfully according to his lights. He shows us heroism in
one way, but the unconditionally good way is that for which no indulgence
need be asked.
We find that error by excess is exemplified by every saintly virtue.
Excess, in human faculties, means usually one‐sidedness or want of
balance; for it is hard to imagine an essential faculty too strong, if
only other faculties equally strong be there to coöperate with it in
action. Strong affections need a strong will; strong active powers need a
strong intellect; strong intellect needs strong sympathies, to keep life
steady. If the balance exist, no one faculty can possibly be too strong—we
only get the stronger all‐round character. In the life of saints,
technically so called, the spiritual faculties are strong, but what gives
the impression of extravagance proves usually on examination to be a
relative deficiency of intellect. Spiritual excitement takes pathological
forms whenever other interests are too few and the intellect too narrow.
We find this exemplified by all the saintly attributes in turn—devout love
of God, purity, charity, asceticism, all may lead astray. I will run over
these virtues in succession.
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First of all let us take Devoutness. When unbalanced, 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 worshiper; and the sacrifices and servilities by which
savage tribesmen have from time immemorial exhibited their faithfulness to
chieftains 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 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.(198) The legends
that gather round the lives of holy persons are fruits of this impulse to
celebrate and glorify. The Buddha(199) and Mohammed(200) and their
companions and many Christian saints are incrusted with a heavy jewelry of
anecdotes which are meant to be honorific, but are simply _abgeschmackt_
and silly, and form a touching expression of man’s misguided propensity to
praise.