It will not be denied, I think, that even in England, where we pride ourselves so much upon our religiousness, where we have a hundred religions and only one sauce, the only country except Russia where the head of the State is also the head of the National Church, that even in England religion is unevenly divided. Men do not take to it so much as women, some men are attracted by it more than others, some women more than the rest of women. We find it in all qualities, in all depths, from the thin veil above the scepticism of many men of science to the deep emotional feeling of the enthusiast, and it is nowhere a question of class, of education, or of occupation. It would be very difficult, I think, to assert, and quite impossible to prove, that religion affects any one class more than another; for it must not be forgotten that, although more perhaps of certain classes go to religious services than of others, the explanation may not be any comparative excess of religious feeling. In a class where the women greatly exceed the men in numbers, there will be apparently comparatively more religion, and the rank of society also influences the result. For some it is easier and pleasanter to attend church or chapel than for others, and a class which is not hardly worked during the week can more easily spare the leisure for religious exercises than others to whom the need for air, for exercise, for change, appeals more strongly. There may also be other factors at work. But indeed it is unnecessary to press the matter closely, for it will hardly be asserted, I think, that religion is ever a question of class. One religion may be so, but not religion broadly speaking, not the religious temperament as it is called. To whom, then, does religion appeal most, and to what side of their nature does it appeal?

Generally speaking, I think, to the more emotional and less intellectual.

That this is but a general rule, with many exceptions of which I will speak later, I admit. But I think it will be admitted that it is a general rule. Intellect, reason, whether cultivated or not, hard-headed common sense, whether in the great thinker or the artisan, is seldom strongly religious. Faith of a kind they may retain, but they usually restrain it to such a degree that it is not conspicuous. Hard-headed thinkers are rarely "deeply religious." But as you leave the domain which is the more dominated by thought, and descend or ascend—I have no wish to infer inferiority or the reverse,—to the natures more accessible to sentiment, more governed by the emotions, religiosity increases. Till finally you arrive at the fanatic, where reason has disappeared and emotion is the sole guide.

They are easily recognised, these enthusiasts, by their lined faces, by their nervous speech, but above all by their eyes. You can see there the emotional strain, the too highly strung system which has abandoned itself to the excesses of religion. But there seems to be another rule; religion varies according to the interests a person has in life. A man, or a woman, with many interests, with much work, living a full life in the world, has but little time usually for religion; he can devote but a small part of his life to it. Its call is to him less imperative, less alluring; it is but one among many notes. But as the absorption in daily life decreases, as the demands from without are less, so does the devotion to religion increase. Until at last among these rural people, who with strong feelings have but little to gratify them, whose lives are the dreary monotony of a daily routine into which excitement or novelty never enters, we find often the greatest, the strongest, and narrowest faith. So too among those many women of our middle classes whose lives, from the want of mankind or of children, fall into narrow ways, whose lives are dull, whose natural affections and desires are too often thwarted, there lives the purest and strongest, if often, too, the narrowest religion. It comes to them as a help where there is none other, it brings to them emotions when the world holds for them none, it contains in itself beauty and love and interest when the world has refused them. How much, how very much of the deeper religious feeling is due to the want of other pleasure in life, to the forced introspection of solitude, to the desire to feel emotion when there is nothing without to raise it.

The old and disappointed turn almost always to religion. Thus it seems as if the quality of religion in mankind were due to two causes; to temperament, according to the emotional necessity, the desire for stimulation and the absence of mental restriction; and to environment, according as the life led furnishes excitement and interest or is dull, leading to a search within for that which does not come from without. Of such are the ultra religious.

And the irreligious, those who say openly that they have no religion, amongst whom are they to be found? They can, I think, be divided into three classes.

There are first of all those who are very low down in the scale of humanity, who are wanting in all the finer instincts of mankind. You will find them usually in cities, amongst the dregs of the people; for in the country it is difficult to find any who are quite without the finer emotions. The air and land and sky, the sunset and the sunrise, the myriad beauties of the world, do not leave them quite unmoved. And then solitude, which gives men time to think, not to reason but to think; which gives their hearts peace to hear the echoes of nature, is a great refiner. Countrymen are often stupid, they are rarely brutalised.

Then there are the sensualists of all classes in life. It is a strange thing to notice that of all the commands of religions, of all laws of conduct they have given forth, but one only is almost invariably kept. There is but one crime that the religious rarely commit, and that is sensuality. It is true the rule is not absolute. There are the Swedenborgians, if theirs can be called a religion. I doubt myself if it be so, if this one fact did not oust it from the family of faiths. But however that may be, sensuality in all history has been almost always allied to irreligion. Not as a consequence, but because I think both proceed from the same cause, a nerve weakness and irritability arising from deficient vitality, a want of the finer emotions, which are religion.

Finally, there are the philosophers. In all history, in all countries, in all faiths there have been the thinkers, the reasoners, the "lovers of wisdom," and they have rejected the religion of their people.

Of what sort are these philosophers? Are they, as they claim to be, the cream of mankind, those who have the pure reason? Are they such as the world admires? I think not. For pure reason does not appeal to mankind. It is too cold, too hard, too arid. It is barren and produces nothing. What has philosophy given the world but unending words? It is the denial of emotion, and emotion is life. It is the reduction of living to the formula of mathematics—a grey world. Those who, rejecting religion, rely on pure reason, are those who have lost the stronger emotions, who have heads but no hearts, while the enthusiasts have hearts but no heads. And in between these lie the great mass of men who are religious but not fanatics, who reason but who do not look to reason to prove their religion, the men and women who live large lives, and are lost neither in the tumult of unrestrained emotion, nor bound in the iron limits of a mental syllogism.

"Do you infer," it will be asked, "that religion is in inverse ratio to reason? But it is not so. Many men, most men of the highest intellectual attainments, have been deeply religious, great soldiers, sailors, statesmen, discoverers; the great men are on our side, the thinkers have been with us." I am not sure of that. The great doers have always been religious, the great thinkers rarely so. No man has ever, I think, sat down calmly unbiassed to reason out his religion and not ended by rejecting it. The great men who have also been religious do not invalidate what I say. Newton was a great thinker, perhaps one of the greatest thinkers of all time. He could follow natural laws and occurrences with the keenest eye for flaws, for mistakes, for rash assumption. He could never accept until he had proved. But did he ever apply this acumen to religion? Not so; he accepted at once the chronology of the Old Testament unhesitatingly, blindly, and worked out a chronology of the Fall much as did Archbishop Usher.

Indeed, I think it is always so. There is no assumption more fallacious than that because a man is a keen reasoner on one subject he is also on another, that because one thing is fair ground for controversy other things are so also. Men who are really religious, who believe in their faith whatever that faith may be, consider it above proof, beyond argument. It is strange at first, it is to later thoughts one of the most illuminating things, to hear a keen reasoner who is also a religious man talk, to note the change of mental attitude as the subject changes. In ordinary matters everything is subject to challenge, to discussion, to rules of logic. But when it is religion that comes up, note the dropped voice, the softened face, the gentle light in the eye. It is emotion now, not reason; feeling, not induction. It is a subject few religious men care to discuss at all, because they know it is not a matter of pure reason. True religion, therefore, that beautiful restrained emotion which all who have it treasure, which those who have not envy and hate, lives among the men who are between these extremes. Those who with strong emotions have but narrow outlets for it become unduly religious, narrow sectarians.

Those with uncontrolled religious emotions become fanatics, those with none but brute emotions remain brutes. Those whom the cult of sensual desires has overcome follow Horace and Omar Khayyam. Those in whom reason has overpowered and killed the emotions become those most arid of people, philosophers. True and beautiful faith is to be found only amongst those who lie between all these extremes. They have many and keen emotions, but they find many outlets for them all, so that the stream of feeling is not directed into one narrow channel. And they employ reason not as a murdering dissecting power, but as an equaliser and balancer of the living. Reason is not concerned with what religion is, but only with the relative position religious emotions shall occupy in life. Too little lets it run wild, too much kills it.

But religion is never reason. It is a cult of certain of the emotions. What these emotions are I hope to explain further on.