The Psychology of Religion as a branch of scientific study was "made in America," and is not yet twenty years old. Its virtual founder and popularizer was William James, who furnished the introduction to Starbuck's "Psychology of Religion" (1900) and published his "Varieties of Religious Experience," the quarry in which all subsequent writers have mined, in 1903. An earlier American philosopher, Jonathan Edwards, gained the right to be called the precursor of the science by his treatise on the Religious Emotions. Of Edwards, named with Emerson and James as one of three representative American philosophers, Royce has said that "he actually rediscovered some of the world's profoundest ideas regarding God and humanity simply by reading for himself the meaning of his own religious experiences."[90]

The way for a scientific study of religious experience had been prepared by the development of modern psychology and by the growing popular interest in religious phenomena. We recall the wide-spread interest in Drummond's "Natural Law in the Spiritual World," dealing with personal religion, and in Kidd's "Social Evolution," which dealt with the place of religion on the broader field of human progress. The popularity of monographs on mysticism, such as those by W. R. Inge and Miss A. Underhill, and of lives of the saints, such as Paul Sabatier's "Life of Francis of Assisi" and McCabe's "Life of Augustine," showed by the personality of their authors and the wide circle of their readers that religious experiences, especially if they be profound and unusual, are matters of deep human interest even to those not closely connected with the churches. The saints have been taken from the church historians, and made to live before us as men of like passions with ourselves. For many months recently a religious novel, "The Inside of the Cup," held its place as the "best seller."

Since the pioneer work of Starbuck, Coe[91] and James, the literature of the subject, largely by American writers, has grown apace. Established in the college course, the psychology of religion has threatened to disturb vested rights even in the theological schools. Conversion and sanctification, once regarded as themes for the theological cloister, the revival service or the closet of devotion, have become familiar topics of the text-books and commonplaces of the lecture room.

Will this study of religion from the psychological standpoint prove to be an ally to the Christian Faith, or will it put new weapons into the hands of its enemies? It may be too early for a positive answer, but the advertising value of the new movement cannot be denied, and several specific entries at least may be made on the credit side of the ledger. The materials for religious psychology have been drawn mainly from Christian biography and Christian experience. Impressive stories of conversion, gathered from the ages of Christendom and from the work of city and foreign missions, have strengthened the argument from Christian experience. Taken from religious biographies and devotional books and missionary annals and modern questionnaires, the testimony of the saints of all ages has been marshalled as they have told what the Lord has done for their souls. The very fact that it has been worth while to write psychologies of religion is in itself significant. "Christianity," says Eucken, "has been the first to give the soul a history; in comparison with the interest of the soul, it has reduced all events in the outer world to mere incidentals, according to the words of Jesus: 'What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul.'"[92]

Separating as far as possible the descriptive from the metaphysical aspects of our subject, we may consider I. The Psychology of Religious Experience; and II. The Metaphysical Implicates of Religious Experience. Under the first head we shall find that the study of religious experience has been favourable to the Christian Faith in at least four respects.

I. The Psychology of Religious Experience

I. The scientific study of religion shows that religion belongs to the essence rather than the accidents of human nature. Man is the praying, the believing, and the hoping-to-survive animal. It is not the office of psychology to prove the existence of God, but it may show that belief in His existence is natural to man, and is favoured by natural selection. It may show that religious experiences have, in the words of James, "enormous biological worth,"[93] and that, to quote again the same writer, "the strenuous type of character will on the battle-field of human history always outwear the easy-going type, and religion will drive irreligion to the wall."[94]

One evidence of the normality of religious faith is the vacuum or sense of loss which continues to be felt in the life of those who have lost it. If we need God, as Augustine says, in order that the soul may live, it is natural that there should be a feeling of spiritual starvation without God. The two classical instances of this "aching void the world can never fill" are those of two well-known scientists, one writing in the eclipse, apparently permanent, of his faith, and the other after its restoration. Says W. K. Clifford: "Whether or no it be reasonable and satisfying to the conscience, it cannot be doubted that theistic belief is a comfort and a solace to those who hold it, and that the loss of it is a very painful loss.... We have seen the spring sun shine out of an empty heaven, to light up a soulless earth; we have felt with utter loneliness that the Great Companion is dead. Our children, it may be hoped, will know that sorrow only by the reflex light of a wondering compassion."[95] It is a sad consolation that children will be spared the loss, because they have not known the joy, of religious faith.

Romanes, during the eclipse of his faith, found that success, intellectual distraction, reputation and artistic pleasure were "all taken together and well sweetened to taste ... but as high confectionery to a starving man." He adds: "I take it then as unquestionably true that this whole negative side of the subject proves a vacuum in the soul of man which nothing can fill save faith in God."[96] Such modern instances show the normality of religion, and are an impressive commentary upon the words of the Psalmist, "My soul is athirst for God," and upon those of Augustine, "Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee."

The normality of religion is further shown in the instinctive turning of the soul to God, or to some higher power, in times of crisis and danger. The religious consciousness is best interrogated, not in times of mechanical routine or worldly preoccupation, but in those moments when we seem to ourselves to be most religious, in moments of clearest insight, or of deepest emotion, or of some crisis in action. The story of one of the survivors of the Titanic disaster is in point:

"The second thing that stands out prominently in the emotions produced by the disaster is that in moments of urgent need men and women turn for help to something entirely outside themselves.... To those men standing on the top deck with the boats all lowered, and still more when the boats had all left, there came the realization that human resources were exhausted and human avenues of escape closed. With it came the appeal to whatever consciousness each had of a Power that had created the universe. After all, some Power had made the brilliant stars above ... had made each one of the passengers with ability to think and act, with the best proof, after all, of being created—knowledge of their own existence; and now, if at any time, was the time to appeal to that Power. When the boats had left and it was seen the ship was going down rapidly, men stood in groups on the deck engaged in prayer, and later, as some of them lay on the overturned collapsible boat, they repeated together over and over again the Lord's Prayer.... And this was not because it was a habit.... It must have been because each one ... saw laid bare his utter dependence on something that had made him and given him power to think.... Men do practical things in times like that: they would not waste a moment on mere words if those words were not an expression of the most intensely real conviction of which they were capable. Again, like the feeling of heroism, this appeal is innate and intuitive, and it certainly has its foundation on a knowledge—largely concealed, no doubt—of immortality. I think this must be obvious: there could be no other explanation of such a general sinking of all the emotions of the human mind expressed in a thousand different ways by a thousand different people in favour of this single appeal."[97]

The instinctive place and biological value of religion in human life, the restlessness and hunger of the soul without religion, show that it is not an excrescence upon human nature. The exclamation of a recent writer seems justified: "The age of scientific materialism is past.... The religious instinct has been adjudged normal."[98]

2. The study of religious experience has shown the power of religion (and certainly for the most part its power for good) in the life of the individual and of society. The psychologists have thrust upon our attention with unmistakable emphasis the fact of conversion, however they may theorize about the fact. The recorded experiences of saints, reformers and missionaries, the testimony collected by the questionnaires and the cases of conversion described in such books as Begbie's "Twice-Born Men" have shown beyond a peradventure that men can be born again. It only remains for the church to say, "Ye must be born again."

The records show that men who are the slaves of appetite and vice, too degraded to be reached by appeals to pride or to prudence, can by the gospel be restored to hope and self-respect and to lives of singular usefulness. As Begbie says: "There is no medicine, no Act of Parliament, no moral treatise, and no invention of philanthropy, which can transform a man radically bad into a man radically good.... Science despairs of these people, pronounces them 'hopeless' and 'incurable.' Politicians find themselves at the end of their resources. Philanthropy begins to wonder whether its charity could not be turned into a more fertile channel. The law speaks of 'criminal classes.' It is only religion that is not in despair about this mass of profitless evil dragging at the heels of progress—the religion which still believes in miracle."[99]

The psychologists have emphasized not only the facts of conversion but the variety in its mode. It has been pointed out that "conversion for males is a more violent incident than for females, and more sudden."[100] Uhlhorn has observed that it is characteristic of a period of conflict "that sudden conversions are more frequent then than at other times, that the marvel inherent in every conversion becomes more evident, and, so to speak, more palpable."[101] A child brought up under strong religious influences will not have the intense struggles which are natural when a hardened criminal or a scoffing unbeliever is converted. Count Zinzendorf raised serious misgivings in the minds of the Moravians when he insisted that he "could not tell the day when he first decided for Christ, and had no knowledge of a time when he did not love Him."[102] The mother of Edmund Gosse, a woman singularly devoted in her labours by tongue and pen to the cause of evangelical religion, wrote in her thirtieth year: "I cannot recollect the time I did not love religion. If I must date my conversion from my first wish and trial to be holy, I may go back to infancy; if I am to postpone it till after my last willful sin, it is scarcely yet begun."[103]

It would be equally one-sided to insist that all conversions must be of the sudden or cataclysmic type, and to ignore the tremendous significance of some sudden and dramatic experiences of conversion. Paul and Augustine are cases in point, and it will scarcely do to dismiss them with the remark that "Paul was probably a neurotic, and that Augustine was a sensualist with a highly developed nervous temperament."[104] The true nature of conversion may best be seen, as James suggests, in those experiences which are exaggerated and intense.[105]

Conversions of the sudden and dramatic type have, as a matter of fact, exerted the most farreaching influence in history. The secular historian is apt nowadays to magnify the influence of Paul upon the life of Europe, but the church historian must add that Paul, as apostle or theologian or missionary, cannot be understood apart from the experience at Damascus. Augustine's conversion inspired his thought and determined his theology. Of Luther, whose conversion may not have been of quite so dramatic a type, a recent writer says: "Indeed, the Reformation in Germany was the spiritual biography of Luther writ large, a spiritual experience materialized in institutions and intellectualized in confessions."[106]

The psychologists unite with the historians in describing the broad objective effects of religion upon the field of history. Christianity in its Pauline form presented, in the West, a successful obstacle to the flood of Eastern thought and culture. When the structure of the Roman Empire was crumbling, it was Christianity in its Roman organization that resisted the disintegrating influences of the barbarian invasion. It was Christianity in its Calvinistic form that became "the seed-plot of modern democracy." "No student of American history," says a writer on the psychology of religion, "can fail to recognize the immense value of religion as a factor in our national development, keeping us in some measure true to the ideals of our fathers.... The fact that our moral conceptions have at all stood the strain of this rapid material development, and that political and social corruption and decay in America to-day are not hopeless and irremediable as they were in Rome during the last century of the Republic, is due, I believe, chiefly to the vitality of religion among us as a factor effectively conservative of our socially recognized values."[107]

3. At a time when the sense of sin is declining, it is interesting to find the psychologists pressing upon our attention the facts of the disorder, the wrongness, the uneasiness, or frankly the need of salvation, of human kind. It would be out of place for the psychologist, as such, to dogmatize upon the subject of original sin, but in his analysis of human nature he cannot overlook the fact of moral discord, a fact often politely ignored in the text-books on ethics. Thus when James speaks unreservedly and autobiographically, he confesses that "we all need mercy." The morally athletic attitude tends to break down at last even in the most stalwart; and, in the condition of moral helplessness, "all our morality appears as a plaster hiding a sore it can never cure, and all our well-doing as the hollowest substitute for that well-being that our lives ought to be grounded in, but alas! are not."[108] The essential fact of religion, for Royce, is man's quest for salvation; and the central and essential postulate which he considers in his recent lectures, "is the postulate that man needs to be saved."[109]

A distinction is sometimes drawn between a "once-born" and a "twice-born" type of religious experience, but the distinction is not absolute. We have already noticed that those who can trace no abrupt change in their experience, nor tell the day or even the year of their conversion, may be zealous in evangelistic labour, and emphatic in their insistence upon the need of regeneration. A well-known example of the once-born type of religion is the late Edward Everett Hale, whose words are often quoted: "I observe, with profound regret, the religious struggles which come into many biographies, as if almost essential to the formation of a hero. I ought to speak of these, to say that any man has an advantage, not to be estimated, who is born, as I was, into a family where the religion is simple and rational; etc."[110] And yet Dr. Hale's son, brought up in such an atmosphere, has himself described in the public press an experience under revival preaching which belongs to the "twice-born" type.[111]

The secrets of every heart are not revealed to the psychologist, and we should not expect of him the deepest insight into the sinfulness of sin; but in emphasizing man's sense of need, of incompleteness, of restlessness and of disharmony, psychology has done much to confirm, if it cannot of itself affirm, the Scriptural statement that "all have sinned."

4. Is man saved by faith or by works, by faith or by character? As between the evangelical and the legal schemes of salvation, the answer of religious psychology is emphatically in favour of the former. Psychologists of all schools unite in insisting that those who pass from restlessness and impotence to peace and fullness of life do so in wonderful accord with the Scriptural method of salvation by faith. The witnesses may be called, even though to a tedious degree one witness only confirms the testimony of another.

We are advised by Jastrow that it is "necessary for the life that we live that we should frequently permit the focus of our concerns and of our struggles to fade away, and allow the surgings from below to assert themselves."[112] James remarks that "there is a state of mind known to religious men, but to no others, in which the will to assert ourselves and hold our own has been displaced by a willingness to close our mouths and be as nothing in the floods and waterspouts of God.... The time for tension in our souls is over, and that of happy relaxation, of calm deep breathing, of an eternal present, with no discordant future to be anxious about, has arrived."[113]

Starbuck emphasizes the surrender of the will in conversion even when the will has been consciously exercised. "We are confronted with the paradox ... that in the same persons who strive towards the higher life, self-surrender is often necessary before the sense of assurance comes. The personal will must be given up. In many cases relief persistently refuses to come until the person ceases to resist, or to make an effort in the direction he desires to go."[114] He adds that "faith is the next step after self-surrender, or even the accompaniment of it.... Then faith comes in, which means that the soul is in a receptive attitude.... One throws oneself completely on the world-will, so that one may become a 'receiver of its truth and an organ of its activity.'"[115]

Royce remarks that our religious need is supreme, and "is accompanied with the perfectly well-warranted assurance that we cannot attain the goal unless we can get into some sort of communion with a real life infinitely richer than our own.... The religious ideal grows out of the vision of a spiritual freedom and peace which are not naturally ours."[116] "The little will of the conscious and limited individual," says J. B. Pratt, "must simply give up before the deeper will of the larger personality, stretching out from the conscious centre no one knows how far, can take control."[117]

It is clear that the evangelical scheme of salvation, "Heaven's easy, artless, unencumber'd plan," has found strong and unexpected support from the modern study of religious experience. The impressive testimonies above, if translated into Pauline language, mean that salvation is by faith and not by works of the law. The examples from which the generalizations are made are taken mostly from orthodox circles, but even those who are but loosely attached to Christianity in its usual forms are saved in the same way. Thus James says of the mind-curers that "they have demonstrated that a form of regeneration by relaxing, by letting go, psychologically indistinguishable from the Lutheran justification by faith and the Wesleyan acceptance of free grace, is within the reach of persons who have no conviction of sin and care nothing for the Lutheran theology."[118] The theologian might contend that Christianity is a sort of "sleeping partner" in these schemes, and that they contain the mustard seed of faith sufficient to save; but, however this may be, the fact remains that the mind-cure schemes teach a form of salvation by faith, not by works.

The strain of attention and constant anxiety, involved in the effort to keep the law and save oneself, leads to exhaustion and despair. The struggle is hopeless, the psychologist would say, because the nervous centres become exhausted. Man cannot, however zealous for the law, by conscious activity and moral struggle attain inward peace. Salvation by works is psychologically as well as theologically impossible.

II. Metaphysical Implicates of Religious Experience

The students of religious experience are to a remarkable degree in agreement with one another and with the teachings of evangelical Christianity in their view of the place and power of religion in human life, and of the need of salvation and the way of salvation. Disagreements arise when they seek no longer to describe religious experience but to interpret that experience. Our authorities, in technical language, agree very largely when they study the phenomenology of religion, but differ widely as to its metaphysical implicates.

It may properly be asked whether the psychology of religion, while dealing with the deep things of man, is competent to reveal the deep things of God. Should the psychologist venture to draw any inferences in the metaphysical sphere? Strictly speaking he is studying only subjective phenomena, and the self-imposed limitations of his subject should forbid him from launching into metaphysical speculation. If he cannot, as a psychologist, call his soul his own, much less can he infer that God exists or that Christianity is true. He must remain, perforce, in the outer courts of the temple, and cannot enter the inner shrine.

As a matter of fact no writer on the psychology of religious experience really confines himself within strictly empirical limits. Metaphysical inferences are in fact drawn, or very plainly suggested, and the important question becomes what inferences of this nature, whether positive or negative, are proper and legitimate. Religious experience is at any rate not self-explanatory, but points to something beyond itself, whether that something be merely a disordered nervous system, or a natural impulse such as that of sex, or a department of consciousness outside of the normal, or a Great Beyond, whether conceived as Humanity or as the living God. We may consider then, (1) the physical explanation of religion, including the sexual; (2) the psychological explanation; (3) the social explanation; and (4) the theological explanation.

1. Lowest in the scale is the view of religion which regards it as the result of abnormal physical or psychophysical conditions. This theory is the expression of a robust secularism, which can quote the proverb, "When the devil was sick, the devil a monk would be," and would prescribe a dose of physic (as his friends did for George Fox) for those in distress on account of their sins. "For the modern materialist, as for the ancient Manichee, sin is a question of physiology; moral depravity only a manifestation of corporeal disorder."[119] Religion and crime, in this view, both depart from the line of normal existence, and are pathological phenomena. But if religion is a disease, it afflicts men in all sorts of physical and mental states, and is practically a universal disease, taking the world at large.

Akin to this pathological explanation of religion is that which sees in it either a natural expression, or else a perversion, of the sexual instinct. "In a certain sense the religious life is an irradiation of the reproductive instinct,"[120] says Starbuck; and G. S. Hall says that "in its most fundamental aspect, conversion is a natural, normal, universal, and necessary process at the stage when life pivots over from an autocentric to a heterocentric basis."[121] This view is popular with those who would give a naturalistic account of the religious life, especially of conversion.

In assuming a close connection between human and divine love, the mystics and the materialists join hands. With both the sexual is transmuted into the spiritual. Plato made the transition in his "PhÆdrus," comparing divine with human love and even with the latter in a degraded form. The sexual passion and the passion for purity both alike stir human nature to its depths, and the love of God and the love of woman are somehow akin. Religion in all ages has made free use of the imagery of love and marriage. The close connection has been emphasized by the statistics which show that the period between twelve and twenty years is preËminently the age of conversion.

On the other hand, the relations between the sexual and the religious life are so various that it does not seem possible to place them in the simple relation of cause and effect. In ancient religions there were examples of phallic worship and the mutilation of priests, of temple prostitutes and vestal virgins. Polygamy and celibacy have both alike been enjoined in the name of religion. The imagery of the bride and the bridegroom has been freely used by the mystics, but it is employed as well by those who are thought to oppose religion.[122] It is true that in Christian circles the curve of conversion rises suddenly and is at its height during the adolescent period; but again the facts are not so clear as to warrant the inference that conversion is an effect of the development of the sexual life. The adolescent period is the time also of the awakening of the intellectual and Æsthetic faculties, of the feeling of responsibility and the stirring of ambition. Unless all of these are irradiations of the sexual impulse, it cannot be said that the religious awakening, coming within this period, must be so regarded. The adolescent period is one of peculiar religious susceptibility, but in part this may be due to the influence of social pressure, brought to bear very strongly at this period by parents and teachers. Again, the exceptions on both sides are too many. Adolescents, even those under religious influences, are not always converted; indeed this period is one of peculiar susceptibility to doubt. It is notorious that this is the time when the Sunday-school and the church are apt to lose their hold on the boys, and the questionnaires show juvenile atheism as well as juvenile piety. Sex development cannot well be the cause both of religion and irreligion.

While conversions are most frequent in the adolescent period, they occur both before and after it, as the statistics show. The notable conversions which have been most far-reaching in their effects, such as those of Paul, Augustine, and Luther, have occurred after adolescence. Conversion with Augustine meant the repression of sex desires and a celibate life, while in the case of Luther it meant freedom to marry. James observes that "the effects are infinitely wider than the alleged causes, and for the most part opposite in nature."[123] Paul's conversion and that of multitudes after him have no suggestion of a sexual element, and it is notable that men are apt to become increasingly occupied with religion in advancing age as the sexual impulse wanes.

The adolescent theory of conversion has, indeed, a lesson for Christian parents and teachers. They should urge upon boys and girls decision and public identification with the church during this period; but it would be a loss to religion if religious teachers should forget the profound psychology of the motto: "Give me a child for his first seven years, and you can have him for the rest of his life." As Stevens says: "We cannot wait till adolescence is reached before we win the soul for God. That would be fatally late. The boy must know that the highest is the highest when he sees it, and must have been prepared to love it."[124] The profound emotional disturbance of puberty is not regeneration in the Christian sense, while at that time the conditions for it may be peculiarly favourable.

2. Midway between those explanations of religion which refer it to a physical and to a supernatural cause is the psychological theory advocated by James, that the special seat or source of the religious life is in the Subconscious. While the "subliminal" and the "subconscious" are newcomers in psychology, they have already played a considerable rÔle in religious discussion, and have been used in illustration and even in reconstruction of theological doctrine. Multiple personality illustrates the Trinity; the subconscious is made, as in Sanday's "Christologies Ancient and Modern," the sphere of the divine nature of Christ; and psychical research is looked to by some as a hopeful reinforcement or scientific demonstration of the doctrine of a future life.

The subconscious is used in a rather loose way by popular and even by scientific writers. James regards it as "nowadays a well-accredited psychological entity,"[125] while Pratt refers to the use that is made of it as "rather questionable psychology."[126] Some of its possible and legitimate meanings are: (a) Those hereditary dispositions which, unknown to the man himself, largely shape his actions; or (b) the psychophysical machinery of habitualized action. As Jastrow says: "We rise upon steps of our habitualized selves, grown familiar to their task."[127] The subconscious again (c) may mean that subliminal activity of the mind which, when the conscious strain of effort and attention has been unsuccessful, often, as it seems, does the work for one, recalling the forgotten name, solving the problem, or even creating a new product such as a finished song or poem.

Lastly (d) the subconscious may refer to that more occult sphere to which belong the phenomena of hypnotism, automatism, multiple personality, and perhaps telepathy, in virtue of which the subject performs actions or has ideas to which his ordinary consciousness gives no clew. The subconscious in any or all of these senses is at least the dwelling place of mystery. Starbuck admits that "what happens below the threshold of consciousness must, in the nature of the case, evade analysis."[128] It is a mysterious region of shadows, a twilight zone in which the divine and human may meet. It may be in itself the source of the religious life, or at least the channel through which revelation and redemptive influence may come.

In James' exposition the subconscious part of a man is the higher part; and man is conscious that this higher part of himself "is co-terminous and continuous with a more of the same quality, which is operative in the universe outside of him."[129] What is this more? Our point of contact with it is the subconscious self; and without asking for the farther limits of the "More," and "disregarding the over-beliefs," "we have in the fact that the conscious person is continuous with a wider self through which saving experiences come, a positive content of religious experience, which, it seems to me, is literally and objectively true as far as it goes."[130]

James' theory of the subconscious as the organ of religion can appeal to many undoubted facts, but if it means, as the tendency of his exposition indicates, that the subconscious as the organ of religion has superior moral worth to the life of full consciousness, it may be insisted that the subliminal sphere is the source of evil as well as of good. The subconscious may be identified with the flesh as well as with the spirit. If the subconscious, to use Pauline language, is the medium of higher spiritual influences, it is also the seat of the "old Adam," of "sin that dwelleth in me." In this region is to be found the source alike of the unexpected heroisms and weaknesses of men, of Peter's courage before the Council and of his cowardice before the serving maid. Hereditary and habitualized dispositions and tendencies are like the submerged part of an iceberg, and the winds of conscious resolution and effort are often powerless against the sweep of the hidden current beneath.

It may be admitted that "if the grace of God miraculously operates, it probably operates through the subliminal door,"[131] but it should be remembered that in this region of the subliminal there are "dragons" as well as seraphim. Hypnotic influences may be therapeutic or they may be baleful, and in the region of the subconscious, it is hinted, insane delusions and psychopathic obsessions may find their source.[132] The subconscious is a battle-field rather than itself a source of help, and it cannot be said that the subconscious man of the shadows, if he exists in any of the rÔles assigned to him, is any better or more religious than the man who has his being in the full sunlight of conscious activity. The psychological explanation of religion, like the pathological and the sexual, really proves too much. From all these alleged sources of religious life, not only saving influences but destructive influences flow. Royce's criticism is that "the new doctrine, viewed in one aspect, seems to leave religion in the comparatively trivial position of a play with whimsical powers—a prey to endless psychological caprices."[133]

3. Another theory of religion, now popular, seeks its explanation not in any bodily condition or stage of growth, nor in any special department of the mental life, but in the social relationships of men. Religion becomes a recognition of social values, "a consciousness of the highest social values,"[134] and is practically to be identified with patriotism, altruism and the vision of the future of society. "To-day," says Leuba, "most men and women derive whatever strength they may have to maintain their integrity and to devote themselves to the public good from their respect and love for their family, their friends, their business associates, and the state, and from their desire for the respect and love of men, much more than from any religious conviction. It is no longer the consciousness of God, but the consciousness of Man that is the power making for righteousness."[135] No metaphysical assumptions need be made by this view of religion except that of the existence of a world of one's fellow-men, a postulate which seems necessary even to a functional psychology.

However much in harmony with the spirit of the age, the social explanation of religion is one-sided and is inadequate to the depth and massiveness and infinite perspective of religious experience. Religion is a triangle with God, the self and one's brother at its three angles.

(a) The Social theory of religion gives no adequate recognition of the worth either of the individual or of society. The deepest message of religion is that the soul is worth something to God. Man, in spite of his social obligations, is not made simply for his brother. "We die alone," Pascal says, and there is a sense in which we live alone. As a writer on the psychology of the New Testament says: "The self, according to the New Testament, is not merely a social self developing in a community of other finite selves; it is a divine self realizing its ideal powers of service, and fulfilling its destiny only in a fellowship with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ."[136] Unless Humanity is endowed with the attributes of Deity, as it almost seems to be in the Positivist ritual, the estimate of society is also lowered when men are viewed as having relations and obligations only to one another. As James Ward has pointed out, Humanity can only have the significance and sacredness of the individuals from whom it is abstracted, and if these have no permanent or enduring worth, no more has Humanity.[137]

(b) The humanitarian view narrows too much the horizons of religion. It would exclude from religion the sense of infinite dependence, and of devotion to and communion with a personal higher Power. A religion of humanity merely will seem superficial to the mood which cries out, "My soul is athirst for God," or "I seek Thee in order that my soul may live." If the religion of the anchorite was one-sided, so equally is that of the humanitarian.[138] Neither sin nor righteousness can be interpreted in exclusively social terms, unless the conception of the community be so enlarged as to include the Great Companion and the Great Demander. The social theory, again, has no apparent place for the religion of solitude which finds God in nature. A New England writer says of Mount Ranier:

"I saw the mountain three years ago: Would that it might ever be my lot to see it again! I love to dream of its glory, and its vast whiteness is a moral force in my life." "Climb the mountains," says one of the best known of American mountaineers, John Muir, "and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while care will drop off like autumn leaves."[139]

(c) The religion of humanity must look outside itself for its highest inspiration for social service and for the norm of social progress. It was Christianity that created the atmosphere in which "the enthusiasm of humanity" and zeal for social service could flourish. Christianity has emphasized the value of the individual, and the sacredness of family relationships and the brother-hood of the children of the one Father. Without divine love as its pattern and inspiration human love would lose in comprehension and in intensity.

Society in its progress has ever waited for the signal to be given by some prophet from the deserts, or some seer who has brought from the mount of vision the pattern of a better social order. Those who see in social service the essence of religion are faced with the paradox that the wisest and most beneficent social influences have flowed from those experiences in which the individual turned his back on society and flaunted its ideals. A declaration of independence of society seems needed before there can be the most effective social service. By an unsocial act Abraham left his country and his kindred and his father's house, and yet in him all the families of the earth have been blessed; through Paul's unsocial act in deserting the traditions of his fathers, the course of Western civilization has been profoundly influenced; George Fox's unsocial act in depriving his town of the services of a useful tradesman, and making for himself a suit of leather, has been called by an acute observer, Carlyle, doubtless by an over-emphasis, the greatest event of modern history. Religion, in fact, first asserts itself as something over and above all social relations before its social mission can be performed.

4. The interpretation of religious experience by the psychologists has not always been favourable to theistic or Christian belief, but the failure of other explanations, if established, will lead us to seek a more adequate one by referring to a Reality transcending human experience and social relationships. The study of religious psychology has, in fact, furnished a broad basis from which a metaphysical or theistic inference can be drawn. Such an inference, cumulative in its effect, may be drawn from the universality of religious belief, from the imperativeness of social obligations implying a supersocial sanction, and from the regenerative effects of religion to an adequate cause. "God is real since He produces real effects."[140] But the study of religious experience has not only strengthened the older theistic arguments, but has in effect formulated two new arguments, the pragmatic and the mystical.

The Pragmatic Argument for theism has been stated by James in the spirit of his later philosophy. Taking religions as including creeds and faith-states, James says that without regard to their truth "we are obliged, on account of their extraordinary influence on action and endurance, to class them amongst the most important biological functions of mankind."[141] The pragmatic argument would then run: "The uses of religion, its uses to the individual who has it, and the uses of the individual himself to the world, are the best arguments that truth is in it."[142] There is a satisfaction, a fullness of life, an energy and an expansiveness flowing from religion which are not enjoyed apart from it, and its usefulness, from this standpoint, is a guarantee of its truth. It is merely to state this argument in the more familiar terms of cause and effect to say as James does elsewhere that "work is actually done upon our finite personalities, for we are turned into new men, and consequences in the way of conduct follow in the natural world upon our regenerative change."[143] God is real since He produces real effects.

The Mystical Argument for theism is based on the claim that in religious experience there is a more immediate certainty of the presence of God and a stronger assurance of His existence than can be gained from purely intellectual processes. This evidence, it is clear, may be of the strongest possible kind to the mystic himself, but may seem to be weak or even negligible to the outsider, since the experience in the nature of the case is private and incommunicable. Before the mystical claim is appraised we must distinguish further the various kinds of mysticism. We must distinguish between the absorption of the Buddhist with his passion for annihilation, and the Christian's delight in the Lord; and between a mysticism which means identity of substance and the deification of man, and a moral mysticism which realizes at once that God is infinitely near in His grace but infinitely far in His holiness.

It is fair to ask whether the assurance of the presence of God enjoyed by many Christians in all ages, according to their testimony, is immediate or inferred knowledge, and whether it should be called knowledge or faith. The answer of the mystic might be that there is a "felt indubitable certainty of experience" which is not dependent on the solution of epistemological problems. Otherwise we could not be sure of our own existence or of that of our fellows until we had specialized in the theory of knowledge and solved the problem, which has haunted modern philosophy, of the knowledge of other selves. If it be objected again that a subjective experience cannot ground an inference to an objective, and much less to a supernatural, cause,[144] it may be said that the experience itself, if correctly reported, is supernatural in character. Whether it be Paul's "peace that passes understanding," or Peter's "joy unspeakable and full of glory," or Edwards' "inward sweet delight in God and divine things," or a modern scientist's consciousness of the presence of God, said to be "as strong and real to me as that of any bodily presence,"[145] it is of such a character that no other inference than that to a supernatural cause can properly be drawn. The mystical argument is not based like the other arguments of natural theology upon the regular course of things, but upon what claims to be a new supernatural experience, a new life with new capacities and powers, and new emotions and insights.

It must be noticed, in conclusion, that the evidence which the psychologists have so industriously collected, showing that religion is good for the individual and for society, has been taken almost exclusively from the circle of Christian influences. We might paraphrase James' pragmatic argument and say that Christianity is true because it is good for the individual and for society. His argument from cause might also be applied to Christianity, for the mystical experiences adduced are in great measure not merely those of communion with God but of communion with God in and through Christ. By no analysis in fact, as D. W. Forrest says, is the Christian "able to distinguish his communion with the Father from his communion with Christ. They are blended as consciously real in one indivisible experience."[146] The testimony of Christian experience is to a Power and a Presence which the Christian feels only as he hears and accepts the gospel message and looks to Christ for forgiveness, guidance, and help. "A man who is converted, in the New Testament sense, is one who has surrendered to a force immeasurably greater than anything he has of himself; one who has awakened to the overwhelming consciousness of a spiritual world brought to a focus before him in the Person of Jesus Christ."[147] The Christian believes that he receives grace from the Father and the Son. "When Jesus deals with us and works within us, He does what only God can do. All Christian experience is nothing if it is not this."[148]

After all the secret of the Lord, known to Christians in the catacombs at Rome as they sang, "Jesu, Amor Meus," known to medieval Christians as they sang "Jesu, Dulcis Memoria," and known equally to modern Christians who sing "Jesus, Lover of My Soul," is with them that fear Him. It has been well said that Christianity must be known from the inside, if it is to be known at its full worth. In the nature of the case the evidence of Christian experience is not demonstrative to an outsider. It can come to him only in the way of an appeal: "Come and see; taste and see that the Lord is good."