II

BEING RELIGIOUS-WHAT IT MEANS TO AN ETHICAL IDEALIST

RELIGION, I sometimes think, is the saddest and yet the most beautiful word in human language. The sweet and the bitter are both commingled there, - gentleness, humility, self-sacrifice, and brotherly love on the one hand; and on the other, bigotry, superstition, cruelty, and aggressive self-assertion. What prejudice between one man and another might have been avoided, what life-long misunderstandings could have been escaped, how much more just and true we might have been in judging one another, if only we had all been able to accept one common meaning for the term! And yet we use it and cling to it, because we are afraid that we should lose something out of our lives by giving it up.

We seem to agree; and then, as we go on thinking, we disagree. At the outset, we should nearly all be united in our impressions, connecting the word at once with theistic conceptions, with the belief in God. We do this almost by instinct, having been led from our earliest years to associate it with that Name. But then the confusion begins. Among those who have affected us as being truly religious both in character and life, some were quite destitute of that belief.

What shall we say of a man like John Stuart Mill, who had no assured convictions about Deity, or as to what comes after death, and yet with religious ardour devoted his practical energies and all the resources of his philosophy to the cause of struggling and oppressed humanity? What of Buddhism? It was "without a God," and yet we consider it a religion.

At other times, this inspiring term presents itself to our minds as if pertaining especially to external forms, to prayer or worship. At this point, too, one is in perplexity. There are men who never show that devotional spirit; and still we look upon them as being religious. I think of Immanuel Kant. Surely he was a religious man; his whole philosophy indicates it. But he could not have been given to prayer; for he even went so far as to say that as one advances in the higher life one may quite cease to pray.

Then again, we may treat religion wholly as a matter of sentiment; attaching it not to an outward form of service, not to an intellectual belief, but to an attitude of the heart, to the emotional side of our natures. Most of us at times are kindled to awe and reverence. Who does not have noble aspirations as he looks up at the stars, or does not bow instinctively before the grandeur of lofty character? But then we hesitate, on remembering those who have displayed such exalted feelings while leading most unworthy lives. Were they truly religious? What, for example, of Lord Byron? On the other hand, we think of Darwin, and of the apparent absence in him of such grand emotions while he went on steadily

unfolding the secrets of Nature. He none the less awakens in us the sense of religious awe by the story of his life. Shall we refuse to connect religion with the name of Darwin?

No, we are not quite prepared to associate this sacred word exclusively with the heart, with outward worship, or with an intellectual belief. We know the inspiring influence of the "Angelus" of Millet, or the "Assumption of the Virgin" by Titian. We appreciate the grandeur of thought which has assumed positive shape in the creeds. We value the beauty and worth of noble feeling. But religion implies something more than any of these. We cannot take man "in sections" in this way; for it would be contrary to the structure of the human soul. Rather, we look upon religion as an attitude of the whole self, judging a man in this regard by what he is, by his character and the main purposes of his life, by the direction toward which his nature points, and not by some one feature of sentiment or belief or worship. And thus it is that we speak of a person as having a "religious nature," apart from his mere views or opinions. We can see, therefore, how it is that a bond of sympathy should exist between men of diverse creeds and unlike ceremonial observances.

In spite of all the bitterness connected with the use of it, apart from the credulity associated with it, I believe that to most of us the word "religion" will always imply certain high qualities of character. Does it not indicate something delicate and refined? Will it not recall those pure, deep, lofty natures, a few of which we all have known? Is there not a suggestion about it of a serene, unselfish inward

ness, of a certain steady loftiness of disposition? Do we not connect it with that beautiful old word "spirituality"?

We may not be able to define it with exactness, owing to its complexity. We get our idea of it as a composite impression from all the people we have known or read about, who have been mentioned to us or looked upon by us as "religious people." This impression has been stamped upon us not so much through men's doctrines and teachings as through their personalities. It may be a blending of the Antigone" of Sophocles with Thomas à Kempis, or the character of Savonarola with that of such men as Lincoln or Washington.

In this way our mothers may have had a great deal to do with shaping this composite idea. They can be women of many types, representing every shade of belief and every form of worship. Yet, when thinking of them as religious, what comes to one's mind is rather the kind of persons they were, and not so much those beliefs or that worship. And so it is that there are mothers who may not have been very much disposed to observe the outward forms, or much inclined to show the devotional spirit; and yet they too may have seemed truly religious and possessed of all the essentials of religion.

I knew a mother of this latter kind, the mother of an old schoolmate of mine. It would be impossible to assert that she was an example of the "outward observances." She was not much given to prayer, rarely crossed the threshold of a church, seldom opened the leaves of a Bible. But whenever I think of her, the words "divine," "sacred," and "religious"