Chapter — Slater, Religion & Human Interests
Chapter I: The Meaning of Religion
I PROPOSE in this little book to discuss the relations which exist between religion and other human interests. We shall thus gain a clearer knowledge of what religion is, we shall appreciate it more, and we should be induced to practise it more faithfully and more zealously. But, first of all, we must be sure that we have a clear and correct notion of what religion means. The word has had very different meanings at different times and for different writers on the subject. Lactantius, who wrote at the time of the first Christian Emperor of Rome, tells us that all pagan religions consisted only in rites and ceremonies performed in the worship of the gods; they did not trouble themselves about morality. A modern authority on the subject agrees with Lactantius. " If any of the thinkers of antiquity," says M. Jastrow, " had been asked to define religion, the same answer would have been given by each one—the worship of the gods."* Matthew Arnold thought that religion was only Morality touched with Emotion. For Fichte religion was a view of the world
* M. Jastrow, The Study of Religion, p. 131.
it furnished the supreme truth by man's contemplation of himself as the mirror in which God is reflected. For Schleiermacher religion was neither metaphysics nor morality; it was a state of feeling, which arises at the moment that we become conscious of a contact between ourselves and the universe. Lucretius and Hume identified religion with superstition. Man finds himself in the grip of natural forces vastly more powerful than himself; he personifies those forces of nature, and through fear seeks to propitiate them. According to Herbert Spencer, religion has to do with the infinite, and as man's very finite capacities cannot attain to the infinite, which must always remain unknowable, agnosticism is the only reasonable attitude for man to take up with regard to religion. Since the rise of the historical school of students of religion there has been more agreement as to what religion is. It is admitted that religion is a universal phenomenon of human nature; that as man is a rational animal so he is also a religious animal; that religion is a permanent element in the chequered career of humanity, and in a sense the only permanent element that is to be found there. The views of the modern school of students of religion are well summed up for us by Pius X. in his condemnation of the errors of the Modernists. The Holy Father says "However, this Agnosticism is only the negative part of the system of the Modernists the positive part consists in that they call vital immanence. Thus they advance from one to the other. Religion, whether natural or supernatural, must, like every other fact, admit of some explanation. But when natural theology has been destroyed, and the road to revelation closed by the rejection of the arguments of credibility, and all external revelation absolutely denied, it is clear that this explanation will be sought in vain outside of man himself. It must therefore be looked for in man; and since religion is a form of life, the explanation must certainly be found in the life of man. In this way is formulated the principle of religious immanence. Moreover, the first actuation, so to speak, of every vital phenomenon — and religion, as noted above, belongs to this category—is due to a certain need or impulsion; but speaking more particularly of life, it has its origin in a movement of the heart, which movement is called a sense. Therefore, as God is the object of religion, we must conclude that faith, which is the basis and foundation of all religion, must consist in a certain interior sense, originating in a need of the divine. This need of the divine, which is experienced only in special and favourable circumstances, cannot of itself appertain to the domain of consciousness, but is first latent beneath consciousness, or, to borrow a term from modern philosophy, in the subconsciousness, where also its root lies hidden and undetected. "It may perhaps be asked how it is that this need of the divine which man experiences within himself resolves itself into religion? To this question the Modernist reply would be as follows: Science and history are confined within two boundaries, the one external — namely, the visible world; the other internal, which is consciousness. When one or other of these limits has been reached, there can be no further progress, for beyond is the unknowable.
In presence of this unknowable, whether it is outside man and beyond the visible world of nature, or lies hidden within the subconsciousness, the need of the divine in a soul which is prone to religion, excites—according to the principles of fideism, without any previous advertence of the mind—a certain special sense, and this sense possesses, implied within itself both as its own object and as its intrinsic cause, the divine reality itself, and in a way unites man with God. It is this sense to which Modernists give the name of faith, and this is what they hold to be the beginning of religion."* Judged by principles such as these, all religions are equally natural and equally true. They are the product of religious experiences and of the religious instinct among peoples of very different characters and needs. They owe their origin and growth to very different circumstances, but they are all faithful manifestations of the human spirit ever striving and groping after the Infinite. Very different from this is the teaching of the Catholic Church. She asserts and defends the dignity and power of the human intellect. She affirms that the great principle of causality is of universal application. The progress of science is due to the ceaseless application of that principle to the phenomena of nature; it is universally true, and should be applied fearlessly to the question of man's origin. If it is so applied we come to the knowledge of a supreme Being who made us and all that exists beside Himself. We have an intellect and a will; He who gave them to us must be similarly endowed, but in far greater measure. We
are persons, free and independent, with the right to work out our own destiny. Personality exists in its truest and fullest sense in our divine Creator. As the Vatican Council solemnly declared " The Holy, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church believes and confesses that there is one true and living God, the Creator and Lord of heaven and earth, almighty, eternal, immense, incomprehensible, infinite in intellect and will and in every perfection; who since He is one, singular, altogether simple and unchanging spiritual substance, must be proclaimed really and essentially distinct from the world, in Himself and of Himself most blessed, and ineffably raised above all things which exist and can be conceived beside Himself.... The same Holy Mother Church holds and teaches that God, the beginning and end of all things, can be known for certain from the things that He has created by the natural light of human reason. For the invisible things of Him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made."* Modern science, as interpreted by its best and highest representatives, does not contradict this teaching of the Catholic Church. On the contrary, it defends it. Not long before his death Lord Kelvin was asked to write down for publication what he had already expressed in public on this subject. At the request of the editor this prince of British scientists sent the following declaration to the Nineteenth Century, June, 1903: " I cannot admit that with regard to the origin of life, science neither affirms nor denies
Creative Power. Science positively affirms Creative Power. It is not in dead matter that we live and move and have our being, but in the creating and directing Power which science compels us to accept as an article of belief. We cannot escape from that conclusion when we study the physics and dynamics of living and dead matter all around. Modern biologists are coming, I believe, once more to a firm acceptance of something beyond mere gravitational, chemical, and physical forces; and that unknown thing is a vital principle. We have an unknown object put before us in science. In thinking of that object we are all agnostics. We only know God in His works, but we are absolutely forced by science to believe with perfect confidence in a directive Power—in an influence other than physical, or dynamical, or electrical forces. Cicero (by some believed to have been editor of Lucretius) denied that men and plants and animals could come into existence by a fortuitous concourse of atoms. There is nothing between absolute scientific belief in a Creative Power, and the acceptance of the theory of a fortuitous concourse of atoms. Just think of a number of atoms falling together of their own accord and making a crystal, a sprig of moss, a microbe, a living animal. Cicero's expression, 'fortuitous concourse of atoms' is certainly not wholly inappropriate for the growth of a crystal. But modern scientific men are in agreement with him in condemning it as utterly absurd in respect to the coming into existence, or the growth, or the continuation of the molecular combinations presented in the bodies of living things. Here scientific thought is compelled to accept the idea of Creative Power.... Do not be afraid of being free thinkers! If you think strongly enough you will be forced by science to the belief in God, which is the foundation of all religion. You will find science not antagonistic but helpful to religion."* Undoubtedly, that is the solid foundation of all religion. There we have the first principle and foundation of religion, not in the thoughts, feelings, or needs of man. God emphatically IS. That great objective fact is the basis of religion, and it should be recognised by all reasonable beings. There is without doubt also the inner instinctive need of God within the human breast. As the new-born child begins instinctively to grope for its mother's breast, so the human heart is driven instinctively to grope after its God. Our hearts were made for Him, and they know only unrest till they rest in Him. Still, we cannot build religion on our subjective instincts and feelings. They are too liable to be warped and twisted by human passion and prejudice. The only firm foundation of religion is the solid bed-rock of objective fact. God is—His existence is the cause and explanation of all other being. Religion rises spontaneously from the recognition of that fact. Just as when the mind of the child recognises its parents and all that it owes to them, it naturally concludes that it has a moral duty to reverence, obey, and love them as the authors of its being; so when the mind recognises God, its Creator, it forthwith concludes that it is bound to Him by the ties of reverence, obedience, and love. That is why the Fathers and Schoolmen loved to derive the very word religion from a Latin root meaning to bind man with his Creator. It expresses the moral obligation recognised by right reason that the rational creature should worship its Creator and Lord. Natural reason, then, shows the necessity of natural religion. But natural reason refuses to admit that this is the only basis of religion. Within and without any man with eyes sees abundant traces of the goodness of his Creator, and he cannot rest satisfied with the notion that after creating the world and man, the Creator left mankind to their own feeble gropings after Himself. The supreme Artificer loves the work of His hands, and love forbids Him to desert His child. Of course, then, what all religions teach is and must be true.* God has spoken, has manifested, has revealed Himself and His Will to man. His delight is to be with and to converse with the children of men. That trait must be characteristic of divine as it is of human love. If anyone will properly dispose himself for heavenly visits, God will infallibly come to him and will take up His abode with him. Mystics like St. Teresa have ever verified the truth of those words. The "locutions" of God to the saints are matters of everyday occurrence. Their possibility is obvious, and the experience of all who have learnt how to pray proves the fact of constant communication between God and His rational creatures. As God can and does frequently speak with the individual soul, and thus teaches it and fosters its private spiritual life, so God can and does speak with chosen instruments of His, with a view to their teaching others and fostering public and social religious life. Thus He spoke to His prophets of old, thus last of all, more fully and more especially, He revealed Himself and His divine Will to the world through His only Son. " God, who at sundry times and in divers manners, spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets, last of all, in these days, hath spoken to us by His Son.”* When God thus reveals His Will to mankind through a chosen messenger, He takes care that the messenger is duly accredited. There have always been plenty of false prophets in the world who claimed to speak to men in the name and with the authority of God. When He sent His only begotten Son into the world He took care to accredit and guarantee His divine mission. This He did by prophecy and miracles. Jesus Christ Himself frequently insisted on this point. When asked who He was and by whose authority He spoke and acted, He would answer: If I tell you, you will not believe Me. Consult your Scriptures, for they witness to Me; behold the miracles that I work, for they prove that I am sent by God. "And John called to him two of his disciples, and sent them to Jesus, saying: Art thou he that is to come, or look we for another?... And answering he said to them: Go, and relate to John what you have heard and seen: the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are made clean, the deaf hear, the dead rise again, to the poor the gospel is preached.”† "But I have a greater testimony than that of John: for the works which the Father hath given me to perfect; the works themselves, which I do, give testimony of me, that the Father hath sent me.”‡ " Jesus answered them: I speak to you and you believe not: the works that I do in the name of my Father, they give testimony of me.... If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. But if I do, though you will not believe me, believe the works; that you may know and believe that the Father is in me, and I in the Father."* That is the divine apologetic adopted by Jesus Christ to prove His mission from God. The Catholic Church has always treasured it, and teaches and uses it to this day. Many are unconvinced by it nowadays, just as many were unconvinced by it in the time of Our Lord, but the fault does not lie in the argument.
* loc. cit., p. 1068.
* M. Jastrow, Study of Religion, p. 127.
* Heb. i. 1, 2. † Luke vii. 19-22. ‡ John v. 36.