RELIGION

I. GENERAL INTRODUCTION

BY PROFESSOR R. B. PERRY

HERE are two ways of reading the documents of religion. In the first place one may read the book of one's own faith, as the Christian reads his Bible. In this case one reads for instruction or education in some source to which one attributes authority, and finds there the familiar and well-loved symbols of one's own belief and hope. Such a relation between a man and a book is only possible under peculiar conditions. It is the work of time and tradition and social experience. A book does not become a man's "bible" unless it has been the principal quickening influence in his spiritual life and the source of his illumination, so that he returns to it when he needs to reanimate his purposes or confirm his belief. A "bible" is the proved remedy to which a man confidently resorts for the health of his own soul. It becomes associated in his mind with all that he owes to it, and all that he hopes from it; so that it is not only an instrument, but a symbol. The sacred book of any racial or historical religion is, of course, more than such a personal bible, by as much as a race is more than an individual or history than a lifetime. But it is the personal relation, that between a man and the book that has become his sacred book, that I want here to emphasize. It is evident that in such a relation the reader's attitude will be unique; it will differ from his attitude to any other book. Religious documents are usually and normally read in this way. Each man reads his own bible. And it is only when a document is somebody's bible in this sense that it is a religious document at all.

OTHER MEN'S BIBLES

But there is a second way in which such documents may be read, and it is this second way that must be adopted by those who wish to

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Perhaps this seems to ask too much. How can one convert oneself in turn into a Buddhist, a Mohammedan, a Christian, a Brahmas. and a Confucian? There is, however, a saving possibility. May there not be some attitude common to all believers? May one not divest oneself of what is peculiar to one's own religion and yet retain a something which is in all religion, and by this come to a better understanding of each religion? An Englishman may understand a Frenchman by becoming less English and more human. Similarly it is possible that a Christian may understand Mohammedanism by becoming less Christian and more religious. "No matter where you go," says Fielding, "no matter what the faith is called, if you have the hearing ear, if your heart is in unison with the heart of the world, you will hear always the same song." There is, in other words, a sameness in all religion, which is the link between one special cult and another; and by coming to know and feel this common religion one may pass beyond the limits of one's native religious province.

There is a danger that this important truth should be misunderstood. Some years ago a Parliament of Religions was held in connection with the World's Fair at Chicago. It was a spectacular and impressive event which no doubt did much to liberalize and broaden religious opinion in America. But it encouraged the mistaken opinion that because all religions are equally religious they must be equally good or true. It would be equally reasonable to argue that because all forms of political organization are equally political, one must be as sound or equitable as another. All polities arise in response to the same fundamental need for order and justice, and in so far as they are accepted and persist, they must to some extent satisfy that need. And to understand a foreign polity I must see how it accomplishes in its way and for its place and time what my polity accomplishes in another way for me. But it does not follow that the two are equally sound in principle, or that the one might not be corrected in the light of the other. Similarly religion arises in response to the same fundamental need, a need that is world-wide and for all time. But one religion may meet that need more genuinely and permanently than another; it may be based on a truer notion of man or God, and so deserve preference in a comparative and critical study.

It is also important to avoid the error of supposing that religions should lose their individuality and retain only what they have in common. A religion which consisted only of what it had in common with all other religions would probably be no religion at all. There are peculiar needs as well as common needs. A religion must satisfy the concrete community or individual, and not the abstract man. Perhaps, in all strictness, there must be as many religions as there are believers or worshipers. But this is quite consistent with the important truth that there is one constant factor in life from which all religions spring, and which makes of religion a common necessity. And if one is to study the forms or read the literature of a religion that is not one's own, one must see them in this light. One must become for the purpose simply religious; one must become alive not only to one's peculiar needs, but to that deeper and identical need from which all religions have sprung.

I have suggested that this attitude requires cultivation. This is

doubtless the case with the great majority even of enlightened readers of the present day, and is very apparent in the history of Europeas thought By a curious working of the laws of habit and imitation we are for the most part blind to the meaning of our commones social practices. How many men who obey law and authority, or who are loyal to the peculiar political institution under which they live, reflect upon the utility of government? Most men take government for granted, or fail to think of it at all; and merely assert their factional differences or personal grievances. Similarly for most men religion as a general fact, as a human institution, does not exist. They are conscious only of their particular religious differences; or they identify religion so thoroughly with a special religion that they can think of alien religions only as irreligion. For the vast majority of Christians to be religious means the same thing as to be Christian; not to believe as they believe means the same thing as to be an "unbeliever." Nevertheless a great change has taken place in the course of the last three centuries, and it will be worth our while briefly to trace it.

NATURAL Versus POSITIVE RELIGION

As everyone knows, modern thought arose as a protest against a tendency in the Middle Ages to take too many things for granted. Reason was to be freed from authority, tradition, and pedantry. But this meant, at first, only that man was to exercise his reason in the fields of physics and metaphysics. It was supposed in the seventeenth century that he could do this and yet not question the authority of the state, the church, and the established ethical code. The man of reason was to be internally free, but externally obedient. Institutions, in short, were still to be taken for granted. But in the eighteenth century the liberated reason was directed to institutions themselves, and there arose a rational ethics, a new political science, and a theory of "natural religion." Hobbes, a century earlier, was the forerunner of this movement, and so the original author of all modern social revolutions in so far as these arose from ideas and not from immediate practical exigencies. Of religion Hobbes wrote as follows: "In these four things, opinion of ghosts, ignorance of second causes, levotion toward what men call fear, and taking of things casual for

prognostics, consisteth the natural seed of 'religion'; which by reason of the different fancies, judgments, and passions of several men, hath grown up into ceremonies so different, that those which are used by one man are for the most part ridiculous to another." This passage appears in the "Leviathan,"1 published in 1651. In 1755 Hume wrote a treatise bearing the title "The Natural History of Religion," in which he contended that polytheism is the original form of religion, and that "the first ideas of religion arose not from a contemplation of the works of nature, but from a concern with regard to the events of life, and from the incessant hopes and fears which actuate the human mind." Agitated by "the anxious concern for happiness, the dread of future misery, the terror of death, the thirst of revenge, the appetite for food, and other necessaries ... men scrutinize, with a trembling curiosity, the course of future causes, and examine the various and contrary events of human life. And in this disordered scene, with eyes still more disordered and astonished, they see the first obscure traces of divinity." Both of these passages represented a manner of regarding religion which was revolutionary and offensive to the conservative opinion of the time. They meant that in a certain sense Christianity must be regarded as on a par with the most despised superstitions, since all spring from the same seed in human nature, or from the same general situation in which all men find themselves. It is man's fear of fortune, his hope of controlling the deeper forces of nature for his own good, from which his religion has sprung, and all religions alike may be judged by their power to dispel this fear and fulfill this hope. So there arose the difference between "natural religion," religion conceived as springing from the constitution of man and the common facts of life, and "positive religion," which consists in some specific institution, tradition, and dogma. One now has a new standard by which to judge of religion. Just as one may compare monarchy and democracy with reference to their utility as instruments of government, so one may compare Christianity and Buddhism with reference to their fulfillment of the general religious need. Which is the better religion, in the sense of doing better what a religion is intended to do? And quite apart from the question 1 See Harvard Classics, xxxiv, 311ff.

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