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.
From this point of view, then, it should be clear that there is some
deficiency in such a science as the science of religion, which, by the
very conditions that determine its existence, is precluded from ever
raising the question of the value of any of the religions with which it
deals. Why does it voluntarily, deliberately, and of its own accord,
rigidly exclude the question whether religions have any value--whether
religion itself has any value? One answer there is to that question
which once would have been accepted as conclusive, viz. that the object
of science is truth. That answer delicately implies that whether
religion has any value is an enquiry to which no truthful answer can be
given. The object of science is truth; therefore science alone, with
all modesty be it said, can attain truth. Science will not ask the
question--or, when it is merciful, abstains from asking the
question--whether religion is true. So the reasonable and truthful man
must, on that point, necessarily be agnostic: whether religion is true,
he does not know.
This train of inferences follows--so far as it is permitted illogical
inferences to follow at all--from {11} the premise that the object of
science is truth. Or, rather, it follows from that premise as we
should now understand it, viz. that the object of historic science is
historic truth. That is the object of the science of religion--to be
true to the historic facts, to discover and to state them accurately.
On the principle of the division of labour, or on the principle of
taking one thing at a time, it is obviously wise that when we are
endeavouring to discover the historic sequence of events, we should
confine ourselves to that task and not suffer ourselves to be
distracted and diverted by other and totally different considerations.
The science of religion, therefore, is justified, in the opinion of all
who are entitled to express an opinion, in steadfastly declining to
consider any other point than the historic order of the facts with
which it deals. But in so declining to go beyond its self-appointed
task of reconstituting the historic order of events and tracing the
evolution of religion, it does not, thereby, imply that it is
impossible to place them, or correctly place them, in their order of
value. To say that they have no value would be just as absurd as to
say that works of literature or art have no literary or artistic value.
To say that it is difficult to assign their value may be {12} true, but
is no argument against, it is rather a stimulus in favour of, making
the attempt. And it is just the order value, the relative value, of
forms of religion which is of absorbing interest to missionaries. It
is a valuation which is essential to what I have already designated as
the applied science of religion. Thus far in speaking of the
distinction between the historic order in which the various forms of
art, literature, and religion have occurred, and the order of value in
which the soul of every man who is sensible either to art or to
literature or to religion instinctively attempts to place them, I have
necessarily assumed the position of one who looks backward over the
past. It was impossible to compare and contrast the order value with
the historic order, save by doing so. It was necessary to point out
that the very same facts which can be arranged chronologically and in
the order of their evolution can also be--and, as a matter of fact, by
every man are--arranged more or less roughly, more or less correctly,
or incorrectly, in the order of their value. It is now necessary for
us to set our faces towards the future. I say "necessary" for the
simple reason that the idea of "value" carries with it a reference to
the future. If a thing has value, it is because we {13} judge that it
may produce some effect and serve some purpose which we foresee, or at
least surmise. If, on looking back upon past history, we pronounce
that an event had value, we do so because we see that it served, or
might have served, some end of which we approve. Its value is relative
in our eyes to some end or purpose which was relatively future to it.
The objects which we aim at, the ends after which we strive, are in the
future. Those things have value which may subserve our ends and help
us to attain our purposes. And our purposes, our ends, and objects are
in the future. There, there is hope and freedom, room to work, the
chance of remedying the errors of the past, the opportunity to make
some forward strides and to help others on.
It is the end we aim at, the object we strive for, the ideal we set
before us, that gives value to what we do, and to what has been done by
us and others. Now our ends, our objects, and our ideals are matters
of the will, on which the will is set, and not merely matters of which
we have intellectual apprehension. They are not past events but future
possibilities. The conviction that we can attain them or attain toward
them is not, when stated as a proposition, a proposition that can be
proved, as a statement {14} referring to the past may be proved: but it
is a conviction which we hold, or a conviction which holds us, just as
strongly as any conviction that we have about any past event of
history. The whole action of mankind, every action that every man
performs, is based upon that conviction. It is the basis of all that
we do, of everything that is and has been done by us and others. And
it is Faith. In that sign alone can the world be conquered.
When, then, the man of religion proposes by faith to conquer the world,
he is simply doing, wittingly and in full consciousness of what he is
doing, that which every man does in his every action, even though he
may not know it. To make it a sneer or a reproach that religion is a
mere matter of faith; to imagine that there is any better, or indeed
that there is any other, ground of action,--is demonstrably
unreasonable. The basis of such notions is, of course, the false idea
that the man of sense acts upon knowledge, and that the man who acts on
faith is not a sensible man. The error of such notions may be exposed
in a sentence. What knowledge have we of the future? We have none.
Absolutely none. We expect that nature will prove uniform, that causes
will produce their effects. We believe {15} the future will resemble,
to some extent, the past. But we have no knowledge of the future; and
such belief as we have about it, like all other belief,--whether it be
belief in religion or in science,--is simply faith. When, then, the
man of science consults the records of the past or the experiments of
the present for guidance as to what will or may be, he is exhibiting
his faith not in science, but in some reality, in some real being, in
which is no shadow of turning. When the practical man uses the results
of pure science for some practical end, he is taking them on faith and
uses them in the further faith that the end he aims at can be realised,
and shall by him be realised, if not in one way, then in another. The
missionary, then, who uses the results of the science of religion, who
seeks to benefit by an applied science of religion, is but following in
the footsteps of the practical man, and using business methods toward
the end he is going to realise.
The end he is going to realise is to convert men to Christianity. The
faith in which he acts is that Christianity is the highest form which
religion can take, the final form it shall take. As works of art or
literature may be classed either according to order of history or order
of value, so the works of the {16} religious spirit may be classed, not
only in chronological order, but also in order of religious value. I
am not aware that any proof can be given to show that any given period
of art or literature is better than any other. The merits of
Shakespeare or of Homer may be pointed out; and they may, or they may
not, when pointed out, be felt. If they are felt, no proof is needed;
if they are not, no proof is possible. But they can be pointed out--by
one who feels them. And they can be contrasted with the work of other
poets in which they are less conspicuous. And the contrast may reveal
the truth in a way in which otherwise it could never have been made
plain.
I know no other way in which the relative values of different forms of
religion can become known or be made known. You may have been tempted
to reflect, whilst I have been speaking, that, on the principle I have
laid down, there is no reason why there should not be five hundred
applied sciences, or applications of the science, of religion, instead
of one; for every one of the many forms of religion may claim to apply
the science of religion to its own ends. To that I may reply first,
that _a priori_ you would expect that every nation would set up {17}
its own literature as the highest; but, as a matter of fact, you find
Shakespeare generally placed highest amongst dramatists, Homer amongst
epic poets. You do not find the conception of literary merit varying
from nation to nation in such a way that there are as many standards of
value as there are persons to apply them. You find that there tends to
be one standard. Next, since the different forms of religion must be
compared if their relative values are to be ascertained, the method of
the applied science of religion must be the method of comparison.
Whatever the outcome that is anticipated from the employment of the
applied science, it is by the method of comparison that it must act.
And one indication of genuine faith is readiness to employ that method,
and assured confidence in the result of its employment. The
missionary's life is the best, because the most concrete example of the
practical working of the method of comparison; and the outcome of the
comparison which is made by those amongst whom and for whom he works
makes itself felt in their hearts, their lives, and sometimes in their
conversion. It is the best example, because the value of a religion to
be known must be felt. But though it is the best because it is the
{18} simplest, the most direct, and the most convincing it is not that
which addresses itself primarily to the reason, and it is not one which
is produced by the applied science of religion. It is not one which
can be produced by any science, pure or applied. The object of the
applied science of religion is to enable the missionary himself to
compare forms of religion, incidentally in order that he may know what
by faith he feels, and without faith he could not feel, viz. that
Christianity is the highest form; but still more in order that he may
teach others, and may have at his command the facts afforded by the
science of religion, wherewith to appeal, when necessary, to the reason
and intelligence as well as to the hearts and feelings of those for
whose salvation he is labouring.
The time has happily gone by when the mere idea of comparing
Christianity with any other religion would have been rejected with
horror as treasonous and treacherous. The fact that that time has now
gone by is in itself evidence of a stronger faith in Christianity.
What, if it was not fear, at any rate presented the appearance of fear,
has been banished; and we can and do, in the greater faith that has
been vouchsafed to us, look with {19} confidence on the proposal to
compare Christianity with other religions. The truth cannot but gain
thereby, and we rest on Him who is the way and the truth. We recognise
fully and freely that comparison implies similarity, points of
resemblance, ay! and even features of identity. And of that admission
much has been made--and more than can be maintained. It has been
pressed to mean that all forms of religion, from the lowest to the
highest, are identical; that therefore there is nothing more or other
in the highest than in the lowest; and that in the lowest you see how
barbarous is religion and how unworthy of civilised man. Now, that
course of argument is open to one obvious objection which would be
fatal to it, even if it were the only objection, which it is not. That
objection is that whether we are using the method of comparison for the
purpose of estimating the relative values of different forms of
religion; or whether we are using the comparative method of science,
with the object of discovering and establishing facts, quite apart from
the value they may have for any purpose they may be put to when they
have been established; in either case, comparison is only applied, and
can only be applied to things which, {20} though they resemble one
another, also differ from one another. It is because they differ, at
first sight, that the discovery of their resemblance is important. And
it is on that aspect of the truth that the comparative method of
science dwells. Comparative philology, for instance, devotes itself to
establishing resemblances between, say, the Indo-European languages,
which for long were not suspected to bear any likeness to one another
or to have any connection with each other. Those resemblances are
examined more and more closely, are stated with more and more
precision, until they are stated as laws of comparative philology, and
recognised as laws of science to which there are no exceptions. Yet
when the resemblances have been worked out to the furthest detail, no
one imagines that Greek and Sanskrit are the same language, or that the
differences between them are negligible. It is then surprising that
any student of comparative religion should imagine that the discovery
or the recognition of points of likeness between the religions compared
will ever result in proving that the differences between them are
negligible or non-existent. Such an inference is unscientific, and it
has only to be stated to show that the student {21} of comparative
religion is but exercising a right common to all students of all
sciences, when he claims that points of difference cannot be overlooked
or thrust aside.
If, then, the student of the science of religion directs his attention
primarily to the discovery of resemblances between religions which at
first sight bear no more resemblance to one another than Greek did to
the Celtic tongues; if the comparative method of science dwells upon
the fact that things which differ from one another may also resemble
one another, and that their resemblances may be stated in the form of
scientific laws,--there is still another aspect of the truth, and it is
that between things which resemble one another there are also
differences. And the jury of the world will ultimately demand to know
the truth and the whole truth.
Now, to get not only at the truth, but at the whole of the truth, is
precisely the business of the applied science of religion, and is the
very object of that which, in order to distinguish it from the
comparative method of science, I have called the method of comparison.
For the purposes of fair comparison not only must the resemblances,
which the {22} comparative method of science dwells on, be taken into
account, but the differences, also, must be weighed. And it is the
business of the method of comparison, the object of the applied science
of religion, to do both things. Neither of the two can be dispensed
with; neither is more important than the other; but for the practical
purposes of the missionary it is important to begin with the
resemblances; and on grounds of logic and of theory, the resemblances
must be first established, if the importance, nay! the decisive value,
of the differences is to go home to the hearts and minds of the
missionary's hearers. The resemblances are there and are to be studied
ultimately in order to bring out the differences and make them stand
forth so plainly as to make choice between the higher form of religion
and the lower easy, simply because the difference is so manifest. Now,
the missionary's hearer could not know, much less appreciate, the
difference, the superiority of Christianity, as long as Christianity
was unknown to him. And it is equally manifest, though it has never
been officially recognised until now and by the Hartford Theological
Seminary, that neither can the missionary adequately set forth the
superiority of Christianity to {23} the lower forms of religion, unless
he knows something about them and about the points in which their
inferiority consists. Hitherto he has had to learn that for himself,
as he went on, and, as it were, by rule of thumb. But, on business
principles, economy of labour and efficiency in work will be better
secured if he is taught before he goes out, and is taught on scientific
methods. What he has to learn is the resemblances between the various
forms of religion, the differences between them, and the relative
values of those differences.
It may perhaps be asked, Why should those differences exist? And if
the question should be put, I am inclined to say that to give the
answer is beyond the scope of the applied science of religion. The
method of comparison assumes that the differences do exist, and it
cannot begin to be employed unless and until they exist. They are and
must be taken for granted, at any rate by the applied science of
religion, and if the method of comparison is to be set to work.
Indeed, if we may take the principle of evolution to be the
differentiation of the homogeneous, we may go further and say that the
whole theory of evolution, and not merely a particular historic
science, such as the science of religion, {24} postulates
differentiation and the principle of difference, and does not explain
it,--evolution cannot start, the homogeneous cannot be other than
homogeneous, until the principle of difference and the power of
differentiation is assumed.
That the science of religion at the end leaves untouched those
differences between religions which it recognised at the beginning, is
a point on which I insisted, as against those who unwarrantably
proclaim the science to have demonstrated that all religions alike are
barbarisms or survivals of barbarism. It is well, therefore, to bear
that fact in mind when attempts are made to explain the existence of
the differences by postulating a period when they were non-existent.
That postulate may take form in the supposition that originally the
true religion alone existed, and that the differences arose later.
That is a supposition which has been made by more than one people, and
in more ages than one. It carries with it the consequence that the
history--it would be difficult to call it the evolution and impossible
to call it the progress--of religion has been one of degradation
generally. Owing, however, to the far-reaching and deep-penetrating
influence of the theory of evolution, it has of late grown {25}
customary to assume that the movement, the course of religious history,
has been in the opposite direction; and that it has moved upwards from
the lowest forms of religion known to us, or from some form analogous
to the lowest known forms, through the higher to the highest. This
second theory, however different in its arrangement of the facts from
the Golden Age theory first alluded to, is still fundamentally in
agreement with it, inasmuch as it also assumes that the differences
exhibited later in the history of religion at first were non-existent.
Both theories assume the existence of the originally homogeneous, but
they disagree as to the nature of the differences which supervened, and
also as to the nature of the originally homogeneous.
I wish therefore to call attention to the simple truth that the facts
at the disposal of the science of religion neither enable nor warrant
us to decide between these two views. If we were to come to a decision
on the point, we should have to travel far beyond the confines of the
science of religion, or the widest bounds of the theory of evolution,
and enquire why there should be error as well as truth--or, to put the
matter very differently, why there should be truth at all. But if we
started travelling {26} on that enquiry, we should not get back in time
for this course of lectures. Fortunately it is not necessary to take a
ticket for that journey--perhaps not possible to secure a return
ticket. We have only to recognise that the science of religion
confines itself to constating and tracing the differences, and does not
attempt to explain why they should exist; while the applied science of
religion is concerned with the practical business of bringing home the
difference between Christianity and other forms of religion to the
hearts of those whose salvation may turn on whether the missionary has
been properly equipped for his task.
If, now, I announce that for the student of the applied science it is
advisable that he should turn his attention in the first place to the
lowest forms of religion, the announcement need not be taken to mean
that a man cannot become a student of the science of religion, whether
pure or applied, unless he assumes that the lowest is the most
primitive form. The science of religion, as it pushes its enquiries,
may possibly come across--may even already have come across--the lowest
form to which it is possible for man to descend. But whether that form
is the most primitive as well as {27} the lowest,--still more, whether
it is the most primitive because it is the lowest,--will be questions
which will not admit of being settled offhand. And in the meantime we
are not called upon to answer them in the affirmative as a _sine qua
non_ of being admitted students of the science.
The reason for beginning with the lowest forms is--as is proper in a
practical science--a practical one. As I have already said, if the
missionary is to succeed in his work, he must know and teach the
difference and the value of the difference between Christianity and
other religions. But difference implies similarity: we cannot specify
the points of difference between two things without presupposing some
similarity between them,--at any rate sufficient similarity to make a
comparison of them profitable. Now, the similarity between the higher
forms of religion is such that there is no need to demonstrate it, in
order to justify our proceeding to dwell upon the differences. But the
similarity between the higher and the lower forms is far from being
thus obvious. Indeed, in some cases, for example in the case of some
Australian tribes, there is alleged, by some students of the science of
religion, to be such a total absence of similarity that we are entitled
or {28} compelled to recognise that however liberally, or loosely, we
relax our definition of religion, we must pronounce those tribes to be
without religion. The allegation thus made, the question thus raised,
evidently is of practical importance for the practical purposes of the
missionary. Where some resemblances exist between the higher and the
lower forms of religion, those resemblances may be made, and should be
made, the ground from which the missionary should proceed to point out
by contrast the differences, and so to set forth the higher value of
Christianity. But if no such resemblances should exist, they cannot be
made a basis for the missionary's work. Without proceeding in this
introductory lecture to discuss the question whether there are any
tribes whatever that are without religion, I may point out that
religion, in all its forms, is, in one of its aspects, a yearning and
aspiration after God, a search after Him, peradventure we may find Him.
And if it be alleged that in some cases there is no search after
Him,--that amongst civilised men, amongst our own acquaintances, there
is in some cases no search and no aspiration, and that therefore among
the more backward peoples of the earth there may also be tribes to whom
the very idea of {29} such a search is unknown,--then we must bear in
mind that a search, after any object whatever, may be dropped, may even
be totally abandoned; and yet the heart may yearn after that which it
is persuaded--or, it may be, is deluded into thinking--it can never
find. Perhaps, however, that way of putting it may be objected to, on
the ground that it is a _petitio principii_ and assumes the very fact
it is necessary to prove, viz. that the lowest tribes that are or can
be known to us have made the search and given it up, whereas the
contention is that they have never made the search. That contention, I
will remark in passing, is one which never can be proved. But to those
who consider that it is probable in itself, and that it is a necessary
stage in the evolution of belief, I would point out that every search
is made in hope--or, it may be, in fear--that search presupposes hope
and fear. Vague, of course, the hope may be; scarce conscious, if
conscious at all, of what is hoped. But without hope, until there are
some dim stirrings, however vague, search is unconceivable, and it is
in and by the process of search that the hope becomes stronger and the
object sought more definite to view. Now, inasmuch as it is doubtful
whether any tribe of {30} people is without religion, it may reasonably
be held that the vast majority, at any rate, of the peoples of the
earth have proceeded from hope to aspiration and to search; and if
there should be found a tribe which had not yet entered consciously on
the search, the reasonable conclusion would be not that it is exempted
from the laws which we see exemplified in all other peoples, but that
it is tending to obey the same laws and is starting from the same point
as they,--that hope which is the desire of all nations and has been
made manifest in the Son of Man.
Whatever be the earliest history of that hope, whatever was its nature
and course in prehistoric times, it has been worked out in history in
many directions, under the influence of many errors, into many forms of
religion. But in them all we feel that there is the same striving, the
same yearning; and we see it with the same pity and distress as we may
observe the distorted motions of the man who, though partially
paralysed, yet strives to walk, and move to the place where he would
be. It is with these attempts to walk, in the hope of giving help to
them who need it, that we who are here to-day are concerned. We must
study them, if we are to {31} understand them and to remedy them. And
there is no understanding them, unless we recognise that in them all
there is the striving and yearning after God, which may be cruelly
distorted, but is always there.
It so happens that there has been great readiness on the part of
students of the science of religion to recognise that belief in the
continued existence of the soul after the death of the body has
comparative universality amongst the lower races of mankind. Their
yearning after continued existence developes into hope of a future
life; and the hope, or fear, takes many forms: the continued existence
may or may not be on this earth; it may or may not take the shape of a
belief in the transmigration of souls; it sometimes does, and sometimes
does not, lead to belief in the judgment of the dead and future
punishments and rewards; it may or may not postulate the immortality of
the soul; it may shrink to comparative, if not absolute, unimportance;
or it may be dreaded and denounced by philosophy and even by religion.
But whether dreaded or delighted in, whether developed by religion or
denounced, the tendency to the belief is there--universal among mankind
and ineradicable.
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The parallel, then, between this belief and the belief or tendency to
believe in God is close and instructive; and I shall devote my next
lecture therefore to the belief in a future life among the primitive
races of mankind. That belief manifests itself, as I shall hope to
show, from the beginning, in a yearning hope for the continued
existence of the beloved ones who have been taken from us by death, as
well as in dread of the ghosts of those who during their life were
feared. But in either case what it postulates and points to is man
living in community with man. It implies society; and there again is
parallel to religion. It is with the hopes and fears of the community
as such that religion has to do: and it is from that point of view that
I shall start when I come to deal with the subject of magic, and its
resemblance to and difference from religion. Its resemblance is not
accidental and the difference is not arbitrary: the difference is that
between social and anti-social purposes. That difference, if borne in
mind, may give us the clue to the real nature of fetichism,--a subject
which will require a lecture to itself. I shall then proceed to a
topic which has been ignored to a surprising extent by the science of
religion; that is, the subject of {33} prayer: and the light which is
to be derived thence will, I trust, give fresh illumination to the
meaning of sacrifice. The relation of religion to morality will then
fall to be considered; and my final lecture will deal with the place of
Christianity in the evolution of religion.
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