PROBLEMS OF RELIGION

INTRODUCTORY.

The importance of the study of religion

(1) PRACTICALLY, if not absolutely, all known races of men have been in some sense or degree religious; and to many of them religion has been the most vital of all matters. Hence, the study of this great tract of human interest is essential for all who would comprehend what the life of man historically has been. And Christianity, the faith, confessed or potential, of the great majority of the probable readers of this book, deserves particular attention-just as school geographies properly lay special stress upon the topography of the State in which they are to be used, or historical curricula upon the history and traditions of the fatherland. But, indeed, objectively considered, if we may judge by its results achieved and its evident vitality and promise, Christianity is the greatest of all religions, and bids fair to be more and more the dominant religion of the world. The purely scientific interest in religious phenomena, and particularly in Christian experience, should, then, be at least as great as that in any other field open to our research.

(2) But more than this. Religion is a very precious possession, and a study of it should attract those who feel the lack in their own lives of its comfort and inspiration. There is in most men a great reservoir of potentiality of the religious life; not wholly suffocated by material interests, not quite choked by the increase of knowledge and the crumbling of antique doctrines, it awaits the spreading of a com

prehension of the possibilities of religious living apart from discredited dogmas, to flood society with renewed enthusiasm and power. A study of religion is practically of supreme importance when it can tap this latent spirituality and lead to an espousal of the religious life.

(3) Again, it is important for those who are disturbed in their faith, who are groping for light, or clinging desperately ..to doctrines they cannot whole-heartedly believe because they cannot see how to get along without them; for those who have lost their childhood's creed and turned their backs to religion because that creed represented the only religion they knew. Something to clarify the clouded minds of such men and women, religious in their hearts but confused in their outlook and paralyzed in their worship, - some way of harmonizing the conflicting ideals that beset them,— should come from a careful study of facts as they are.

(4) Even those who are happy in a dogmatic slumber, but through their dogmatism are retarding the influence of religion in the world, and making it harder for others to find peace and religious fellowship, may be urged for the general good to question their presuppositions and look at religion with greater detachment from prejudice and desire. Only by willingness to criticize our own beliefs and confess our individual bias can we hope to approach to anything like a mutual understanding and working agreement.

(5) Finally, a realization of the dynamic in religion should be a summons to those who are not helping in the work Christianity has to do in the world; should reënlist the interest of the earnest, intelligent, able men and women who have in such numbers abandoned the churches. Their help is needed, badly needed, to free the Church from those outgrown conceptions that once aided, but now hamper her; to win for her again the full respect of the thinking world; and to keep her through these bewildering changes infused

with such earnest idealism that she may be the power for righteousness of which the world, with its permanent temptation to selfishness and lust and greed, stands now, as always, in need.

The need of a critical attitude toward religion

Truth is not the only good in life; nor is criticism, however valid, necessarily desirable. The religious spirit, in whatever fantastic garb it be clothed, and however irrational the doctrines by which it seek to justify itself, is more beautiful and valuable than any accuracy of knowledge; and it were better to leave those doctrines uncriticized if that were possible than to weaken or maim that spirit. But there are definite and important reasons why a scientific attitude toward religious dogmas has become our imperative duty.

(1) The insistence upon irrational views interferes badly with the spread of accurate knowledge; and, more than that, the spirit of dogmatism, the reluctance to criticize and reconsider beliefs in the light of observation and experiment, stifles that free and impartial study of evidence which has been the greatest contribution of the physical sciences to civilization. As will be shown in chapter xvi, historic religion — and notably Christianity—has been a very disastrous barrier to intellectual progress. For this reason, then, we must be willing to scrutinize critically our deepest beliefs, because we want the truth; and we cannot be sure that we have the truth, that we are not, instead, standing in the way of enlightenment, unless we seriously undertake so to do.

(2) But for the sake of our eventual assurance and peace, we must purge our religion of its superstition and error. For however we may cover our eyes and our ears, the truths that are being taught by archæologists and anthropologists, by historians and naturalists, are likely sooner or later to trickle

into our consciousness and torture us with misgivings. And when a man whose religion has been based upon unwarranted postulates or intertwined with illusory assurances finds that he has been in so far deceived, he is apt to lose his faith entirely and drift into skepticism and despair. It does not pay, in the long run, to found our hopes upon what the best thought of the age disproves or renders doubtful.

(3) And finally, for the sake of the religion itself that we love, and its future in the world, we must submit it to the surgical operations of criticism. Nine tenths of the attacks upon Christianity are directed against the unessential and untrue accretions that are really separable from its inner kernel of living truth. Thus, our faith has become to some a derision and a laughing-stock, and by others has been cast impatiently aside, simply because the churches have stood in the way of that surgical work which alone can save it and must save it before it is too late. Pious ignorance hurts the cause of religion almost as much as worldliness and sin; no cause can be safely guarded by an organization or a spirit of dogmatism that ignores facts and turns its back upon probabilities. And it is precisely because the battle with worldliness and sin is so desperately hard and long that religion must rid itself of its impediments, must strip for the struggle. It is entirely needless that so many of our finest should be alienated from the Church; but unless we accept the situation, excise the vulnerable portions of our creeds, and adjust our doctrines to the demands of the contemporary intellect, these men and women are bound to drift in greater and greater numbers away from the Church, and, very often, away from the precious truths of which she is the appointed teacher and custodian.

It was the vivid realization of this situation that drew Matthew Arnold into writing critically of religion; and his essays, though superseded in many matters by the work and