_Is the Substance of Religion a Phantom, or an Eternal Reality?_
We are now prepared to see what is involved in the Reality of Religion.
Speaking historically, it may be said that Religion has always had two
sides: on the one side it has consisted of a theory, more or less
elaborate, and on the other side it has consisted of a group of
sentiments conformable to the theory. Now in all ages and in every form
of Religion, the theory has comprised three essential elements: first,
belief in Deity, as quasi-human; secondly, belief in an Unseen World in
which human beings continue to exist after death; thirdly, recognition
of the ethical aspects of human life as related in a special and
intimate sense to this Unseen World. These three elements are alike
indispensable. If any one of the three be taken away, the remnant cannot
properly be called Religion. Is then the subject-matter of Religion
something real and substantial, or is it a mere figment of the
imagination? Has Religion through all these weary centuries been dealing
with an eternal verity, or has it been blindly groping after a phantom?
Can that history of the universe which we call the Doctrine of Evolution
be made to furnish any lesson that will prove helpful in answering this
question? We shall find, I think, that it does furnish such a lesson.
But first let us remember that along with the three indispensable
elements here specified, every historic Religion has also contained a
quantity of cosmological speculations, metaphysical doctrines, priestly
rites and ceremonies and injunctions, and a very considerable part of
this structure has been demolished by modern criticism. The destruction
of beliefs has been so great that we can hardly think it strange if
some critics have taken it into their heads that nothing can be
rescued. But let us see what the doctrine of evolution has to say. Our
inquiry may seem to take us very far afield, but that we need not mind
if we find the answer by and by directing us homeward.
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