faith, a man must possess the faculty of choosing the instruments
of testing truth and untruth, whether revealed or not; he must
know that certain fundamental tenets cannot be absent in any true
religion, and that there are doctrines against which his rational or
moral conscience revolts as incompatible with truth. In short, there
must be the foundation of religion, there must be the solid rock,
before it is possible to erect an altar, a temple, or a church: and
if we call that foundation natural religion, it is clear that no
revealed religion can be thought of which does not rest more or less
firmly on natural religion.
_Science of Religion._
Universal primeval revelation is only another name for natural
religion, and it rests on no authority but the speculations of
philosophers. The same class of philosophers, considering that
language was too wonderful an achievement for the human mind,
insisted on the necessity of admitting a universal primeval
language, revealed directly by God to men, or rather to mute
beings: while the more thoughtful and more reverent of the Fathers
of the Church, and among the founders of modern philosophy also,
pointed out that it was more consonant with the general working of
an all-wise and all-powerful Creator that He should have endowed
human nature with the essential conditions of speech, instead of
presenting mute beings with grammars and dictionaries ready-made.
The same applies to religion. A universal primeval religion revealed
direct by God to man, or rather to a crowd of atheists, may, to
our human wisdom, seem the best solution of all difficulties; but
a higher wisdom speaks to us out of the realities of history, and
teaches us, if we will but learn, that 'we have all to seek the
Lord, if haply we may feel after Him, and find Him, though He is not
far from every one of us.'
_Science of Religion._
The study of the ancient religions of mankind, I feel convinced, if
carried on in a bold, but scholarlike, careful, and reverent spirit,
will remove many doubts and difficulties which are due entirely
to the narrowness of our religious horizon; it will enlarge our
sympathies, it will raise our thoughts above the small controversies
of the day, and at no distant future evoke in the very heart of
Christianity a fresh spirit and a new life.
_Science of Religion._
No judge, if he had before him the worst of criminals, would treat
him as most historians and theologians have treated the religions
of the world. Every act in the lives of their founders which shows
that they were but men, is eagerly seized and judged without
mercy; every doctrine that is not carefully guarded is interpreted
in the worst sense that it will bear; every act of worship that
differs from our own way of serving God is held up to ridicule and
contempt. And this is not done by accident but with a purpose, nay,
with something of that artificial sense of duty which stimulates
the counsel for the defence to see nothing but an angel in his
own client, and anything but an angel in the plaintiff on the
other side. The result has been--as it could not be otherwise--a
complete miscarriage of justice, an utter misapprehension of the
real character and purpose of the ancient religions of mankind;
and, as a necessary consequence, a failure in discovering the
peculiar features which really distinguish Christianity from all
the religions of the world, and secure to its founder His own
peculiar place in the history of the world, far away from Zoroaster
and Buddha, from Moses and Mohammed, from Confucius and Laotse. By
unduly deprecating all other religions we have placed our own in a
position which its founder never intended for it; we have torn it
away from the sacred context of the history of the world; we have
ignored, or wilfully narrowed, the sundry times and divers manners
in which, in times past, God spake unto the fathers by the prophets;
and instead of recognising Christianity as coming in the fulness
of time, and as the fulfilment of the hopes and desires of the
whole world, we have brought ourselves to look upon its advent as
the only broken link in that unbroken chain which is rightly called
the Divine government of the world. Nay, worse than this, there are
people who, from mere ignorance of the ancient religions of mankind,
have adopted a doctrine more unchristian than any that could be
found in the pages of the religious books of antiquity, _i.e._ that
all the nations of the earth, before the rise of Christianity,
were mere outcasts, forsaken and forgotten of their Father in
heaven, without a knowledge of God, without a hope of heaven. If a
comparative study of the religions of the world produced but this
one result, that it drove this godless heresy out of every Christian
heart, and made us see again in the whole history of the world the
eternal wisdom and love of God towards all His creatures, it would
have done a good work.
_Science of Religion._
Do you still wonder at polytheism or at mythology? Why, they are
inevitable. They are, if you like, a _parler enfantin_ of religion.
But the world has its childhood, and when it was a child, it spoke
as a child, it understood as a child, it thought as a child, and in
that it spoke as a child its language was true. The fault rests with
us, if we insist on taking the language of children for the language
of men, if we attempt to translate literally ancient into modern
language, Oriental into Occidental speech, poetry into prose.
_Science of Religion._
Religion is inevitable if only we are left in possession of our
senses, such as we really find them, not such as they have been
defined for us. We claim no special faculty, no special revelation.
The only faculty we claim is perception, the only revelation we
claim is history, or, as it is now called, historical evolution. But
let it not be supposed that we find the idea of the Infinite ready
made in the human mind from the very beginning of our history. All
we maintain is that the germ or the possibility, the Not-yet of that
idea, lies hidden in the earliest sensuous perceptions, and that as
reason is evolved from what is finite, so faith is evolved from what
from the very beginning is infinite in the perceptions of our senses.
_Hibbert Lectures._
Each religion has its own peculiar growth, but the seed from which
they spring is everywhere the same. That seed is the perception of
the infinite, from which no one can escape who does not wilfully
shut his eyes. From the first flutter of human consciousness, that
perception underlies all the other perceptions of our senses, all
our imaginings, all our concepts, and every argument of our reason.
It may be buried for a time beneath the fragments of our finite
knowledge, but it is always there, and, if we dig deep enough, we
shall always find that buried seed, supplying the living sap to the
fibres and feeders of all true faith.
_Hibbert Lectures._
Instead of approaching the religions of the world with the
preconceived idea that they are either corruptions of the Jewish
religion, or descended, in common with the Jewish religion, from
some perfect primeval revelation, the students of the science of
religion have seen that it is their duty first to collect all the
evidence of the early history of religious thought that is still
accessible in the sacred books of the world, or in the mythology,
customs, or even in the languages of various races. Afterwards
they have undertaken a genealogical classification of all the
materials that have hitherto been collected, and they have then only
approached the question of the origin of religion in a new spirit,
by trying to find out how the roots of the various religions, the
radical concepts which form their foundation, and before all, the
concept of the infinite, could have been developed, taking for
granted nothing but sensuous perception on one side, and the world
by which we are surrounded on the other.
_Hibbert Lectures._
A distinction has been made for us between religion and philosophy,
and, so far as form and object are concerned, I do not deny that
such a distinction may be useful. But when we look to the subjects
with which religion is concerned, they are, and always have been,
the very subjects on which philosophy has dwelt, nay, from which
philosophy has sprung. If religion depends for its very life on
the sentiment or the perception of the infinite within the finite
and beyond the finite, who is to determine the legitimacy of that
sentiment, or of that perception, if not the philosopher? Who is to
determine the powers which man possesses for apprehending the finite
by his senses, for working up his single, and therefore finite,
impressions into concepts by his reason, if not the philosopher? And
who, if not the philosopher, is to find out whether man can claim
the right of asserting the existence of the infinite, in spite of
the constant opposition of sense and reason, taking these words in
their usual meaning? We should damnify religion if we separated it
from philosophy: we should ruin philosophy if we divorced it from
religion.
_Hibbert Lectures._
Who, if he is honest towards himself, could say that the religion of
his manhood was the same as that of his childhood, or the religion
of his old age the same as the religion of his manhood? It is easy
to deceive ourselves, and to say that the most perfect faith is a
childlike faith. Nothing can be truer, and the older we grow the
more we learn to understand the wisdom of a childlike faith. But
before we can learn that, we have first to learn another lesson,
namely, to put away childish things. There is the same glow about
the setting sun as there is about the rising sun; but there lies
between the two a whole world, a journey through the whole sky, and
over the whole earth.
_Hibbert Lectures._
I hope the time will come when the subterranean area of human
religion will be rendered more and more accessible, ... and that
the Science of Religion, which at present is but a desire and a
seed, will in time become a fulfilment, a plenteous harvest. When
that time of harvest has come, when the deepest foundations of all
the religions of the world have been laid free and restored, who
knows but that those very foundations may serve once more, like
the catacombs, or like the crypts beneath our old cathedrals, as a
place of refuge for those who, to whatever creed they may belong,
long for something better, purer, older, and truer than what they
can find in the statutable sacrifices, services, and sermons of
the days in which their lot on earth has been cast; some who have
learnt to put away childish things, call them genealogies, legends,
miracles, or oracles, but who cannot part with the childlike faith
of their heart. Each believer may bring down with him into that
quiet crypt what he values most, his own pearl of great price--the
Hindu, his innate disbelief in this world, his unhesitating belief
in another world; the Buddhist, his perception of an eternal law,
his submission to it, his gentleness, his pity; the Mohammedan, if
nothing else, his sobriety; the Jew, his clinging through good and
evil days to the one God, who loveth righteousness and whose name is
'I am'; the Christian, that which is better than all, if those who
doubt it would only try it--our love of God, call Him what you like,
the infinite, the invisible, the immortal, the father, the highest
Self, above all, and through all, and in all, manifested in our love
of man, our love of the living, our love of the dead, our living and
undying love.
_Hibbert Lectures._
If we see the same doctrines, sometimes uttered even in the very
same words, by the Apostles, and by what people call the false
prophets, of the heathen world, we need not grudge them these
precious pearls. When two religions say the same thing, it is not
always the same thing; but even if it is, should we not rather
rejoice and try with all our might to add to what may be called the
heavenly dowry of the human race, the common stock of truth which,
as we are told, is not far from every one of us, if only we feel
after it and find it?
_Gifford Lectures, I._
Religion, when looked upon not as supernatural, but as thoroughly
natural to man, has assumed a new meaning and a higher dignity when
studied as an integral part of that historical evolution which has
made man what he is, and what from the very first he was meant to
be. Is it no comfort to know that at no time and in no part of the
world, has God left Himself without witness, that the hand of God
was nowhere beyond the reach of the outstretched hands of babes and
sucklings; nay, that it was from those rude utterances out of the
mouth of babes and sucklings, that is, of savages and barbarians,
that has been perfected in time the true praise of God? To have
looked for growth and evolution in history as well as in nature
is no blame, and has proved no loss to the present or to the last
century; and if the veil has as yet been but little withdrawn from
the Holy of Holies, those who come after us will have learnt at
least this one lesson, that this lifting of the veil which was
supposed to be the privilege of priests, is no longer considered as
a sacrilege, if attempted by any honest seekers after truth.
_Gifford Lectures, I._
Religion consists in the perception of the infinite under such
manifestations as are able to influence the moral character of man.
_Gifford Lectures, I._
No opinion is true simply because it has been held either by the
greatest intellects or by the largest number of human beings at
different periods in the history of the world. No one can spend
years in the study of the religions of the world, beginning with
the lowest and ending with the highest forms, no one can watch the
sincerity of religious endeavour, the warmth of religious feeling,
the nobleness of religious conduct, among races whom we are inclined
to call pagan or savage, without learning at all events a lesson of
humility. Anybody, be he Jew, Christian, Mohammedan, or Brahman, if
he has a spark of modesty left, must feel that it would be nothing
short of a miracle that his own religion alone should be perfect
throughout, while that of every other believer should be false or
wrong from beginning to end.
_Gifford Lectures, I._
The more we study the history of the religions of the world, the
clearer it becomes that there is really no religion which could be
called an individual religion, in the sense of a religion created,
as it were _de novo_, or rather _ab ovo_, by one single person.
This may seem strange, and yet it is really most natural. Religion,
like language, is everywhere an historical growth, and to invent a
completely new religion would be as hopeless a task as to invent a
completely new language. Nor do the founders of the great historical
religions of the world ever claim this exclusive authorship. On the
contrary, most of them disclaim in the strongest terms the idea
that they have come either to destroy, or to build a completely new
temple.
_Gifford Lectures, I._
The whole world in its wonderful history has passed through the
struggle for life, the struggle for eternal life; and every one
of us, in his own not less wonderful history, has had to pass
through the same wonderful struggle: for, without it, no religion,
whatever its sacred books may be, will find in any human heart that
soil in which alone it can strike root and on which alone it can
grow and bear fruit. We must all have our own bookless religion,
if the sacred books, whatever they may be, are to find a safe and
solid foundation within ourselves. No temple can stand without that
foundation, and it is because that foundation is so often neglected
that the walls of the temple become unsafe and threaten to fall.
_Gifford Lectures, I._
The heart and mind and soul of man are the same under every sky, in
all the varying circumstances of human life; and it would be awful
to believe that _any_ human beings should have been deprived of that
light 'which lighteth _every_ man that cometh into the world.' It
is that light which lighteth every man, and which has lighted all
the religions of the world, call them bookless or literate, human
or divine, natural or supernatural, which alone can dispel the
darkness of doubt and fear that has come over the world. What our
age wants more than anything else is _Natural Religion_. Whatever
meaning different theologians may attach to _Supernatural Religion_,
history teaches us that nothing is so natural as the supernatural.
But the supernatural must always be _superimposed_ on the natural.
Supernatural religion without natural religion is a house built on
sand, and when, as in our days, the rain of doubt descends, and the
floods of criticism come, and the winds of unbelief and despair blow
and beat upon that house, that house will fall because it was not
founded on the rock of bookless religion, of natural religion, of
eternal religion.
_Gifford Lectures, I._
Every religion, being the property of the young and the old, the
wise and the foolish, must always be a kind of compromise, and,
while protesting against real corruptions and degradations, we must
learn to bear with those whose language differs from our own, and
trust that in spite of the tares which have sprung up during the
night, some grains of wheat will ripen towards the harvest in every
honest heart.
_Gifford Lectures, II._
In all the fundamentals of religion we are neither better nor worse
than our neighbours, neither more wise nor more unwise than all the
members of that great family who have been taught to know themselves
as children of one and the same Father in Heaven.
_Gifford Lectures, II._
What can a study of Natural Religion teach us? Why, it teaches us
that religion is natural, is real, is inevitable, is universal. Is
that nothing? Is it nothing to know that there is a solid rock on
which all religion, call it natural or supernatural, is founded? Is
it nothing to learn from the annals of history that God has not left
Himself without witness in that He did good, and gave us rain from
heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts, and the hearts of
the whole human race, with food and gladness?
_Gifford Lectures, II._
While on the one side a study of Natural Religion teaches us that
much of what we are inclined to class as natural, to accept as a
matter of course, is in reality full of meaning, is full of God,
is in fact truly miraculous, it also opens our eyes to another
fact, namely, that many things which we are inclined to class
as supernatural, are in reality perfectly natural, perfectly
intelligible, nay inevitable, in the growth of every religion.
_Gifford Lectures, II._
The real coincidences between all the religions of the world
teach us that all religions spring from the same soil--the human
heart; that they all look to the same ideals, and that they are
all surrounded by the same dangers and difficulties. Much that
is represented to us as supernatural in the annals of the ancient
religions of the world becomes perfectly natural from this point of
view.
_Gifford Lectures, II._
To those who see no difficulties in their own religion, the study
of other religions will create no new difficulties. It will only
help them to appreciate more fully what they already possess. For
with all that I have said in order to show that other religions also
contain all that is necessary for salvation, it would be simply
dishonest on my part were I to hide my conviction that the religion
taught by Christ, free as yet from all ecclesiastical fences and
entrenchments, is the best, the purest, the truest religion the
world has ever seen.
_Gifford Lectures, II._
To expect that religion could ever be placed again beyond the
reach of scientific treatment or honest criticism, shows an utter
misapprehension of the signs of the times, and would, after all, be
no more than to set up private judgment against private judgment. If
the inalienable rights of private judgment, that is, of honesty and
truth, were more generally recognised, the character of religious
controversy would at once be changed. It is restriction that
provokes resentment, and thus embitters all discussions on religious
subjects.
_Gifford Lectures, III._
So far from being dishonest, the distinction between a higher and
a lower form of religion is in truth the only honest recognition
of the realities of life. If to a philosophic mind religion is a
spiritual love of God, and the joy of his full consciousness of
the spirit of God within him, what meaning can such words convey
to the millions of human beings who nevertheless want a religion,
a positive, authoritative, or revealed religion, to teach them
that there is a God, and that His commands must be obeyed without
questioning?
_Gifford Lectures, III._
People ask what can be gained by a comprehensive study of religions,
by showing that, as yet, no race has been discovered without some
word for what is not visible, not finite, not human, for something
superhuman and divine. Some theologians go even so far as to resent
the discovery of the universality of such a belief. They are anxious
to prove that human reason alone could never have arrived at a
conception of God. They would much rather believe that God has left
Himself without witness than that a belief in something higher than
the Finite could spring up in the human heart from gratitude to Him
who gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our
hearts with food and gladness.
_Gifford Lectures, III._
Physical religion, beginning in a belief in agents behind the great
phenomena of nature, reached its highest point when it had led the
human mind to a belief in one Supreme Agent or God, whatever his
name might be. It was supposed that this God could be implored
by prayers and pleased by sacrifices. He was called the father
of gods and men. Yet even in his highest conception, he was no
more than what Cardinal Newman defined God to be. 'I mean by the
Supreme Being,' he wrote, 'one who is simply self-dependent, and
the only being who is such. I mean that he created all things out
of nothing, and could destroy them as easily as he made them, and
that, in consequence, he is separated from them by an abyss, and
incommunicable in all his attributes.' This abyss separating God
from man remains at the end of Physical Religion. It constitutes its
inherent weakness. But this very weakness becomes in time a source
of strength, for from it sprang a yearning for better things. Even
the God of the Jews, in His unapproachable majesty, though He might
be revered and loved by man during His life on earth, could receive,
as it were, a temporary allegiance only, for 'the dead cannot praise
God, neither any that go down into darkness!' God was immortal, a
man was mortal; and Physical Religion could not throw a bridge over
the abyss that separated the two. Real religion, however, requires
more than a belief in God, it requires a belief in man also, and
an intimate relation between God and man, at all events in a life
to come. There is in man an irrepressible desire for continued
existence. It shows itself in life in what we may call self-defence.
It shows itself at the end of life and at the approach of death, in
the hope of immortality.
_Gifford Lectures, III._
So long as we look on the history of the human race as something
that might or might not have been, we cannot wonder that the student
of religion should prefer to form his opinions of the nature of
religion and the laws of its growth from the masterpiece of Thomas
Aquinas, the _Summa Sacræ Theologiæ_, rather than from the _Sacred
Books of the East_. But when we have learnt to recognise in history
the realisation of a rational purpose, when we have learnt to look
upon it as in the truest sense of the word a Divine Drama, the plot
revealed in it ought to assume in the eyes of a philosopher also,
a meaning and a value far beyond the speculations of even the most
enlightened and logical theologians.
_Gifford Lectures, IV._
The question is whether there is, or whether there is not, hidden
in every one of the sacred books, something that could lift up
the human heart from this earth to a higher world, something that
could make man feel the omnipresence of a higher Power, something
that could make him shrink from evil and incline to good, something
to sustain him in the short journey through life, with its bright
moments of happiness, and its long hours of terrible distress.