صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

of the ancient system, they have neither acquired a mere smattering of it nor lightly rejected it, but have pondered it and lived through it; they have grasped whatever is permanent in it by means of the experience of their own pious souls, and instead of destroying they fulfil and exalt it. S'âkyamuni had sought it in the schools of the Brahmans before he appeared as the Buddha to all who were bowed down by the miseries of existence. Luther too had wrestled in his cell in prayer, he had faithfully performed all that the strict monastic rule had imposed upon him, he had visited the holy city in order to satisfy the yearnings of his soul for peace, before he bore witness from his own experience and publicly declared that peace must be sought for in some other way. And you know who it was that said that He had come not to destroy but to fulfil.

An eminent scholar1 has recently attempted to prove that the development of religion is accomplished solely by the persons he calls ecstatics. And he mentions Seers, Mystics, and the like. But I fear that we are here getting beyond the limits of a healthy mysticism, to which we cannot deny its proper place in religion, and are drifting into morbid and fanatical mystification. Inspired with divine spirit, full of God, walking as if seeing the Unseen, realising the Infinite in this finite existence, such have been the creators of a

1 Duhm, Das Geheimniss in der Religion.

new religious life. Not beside themselves like a medicine - man or a Shaman, it was they themselves who created it, aware of their object and fully conscious of their vocation. Although there were some among them who could not entirely rise above the imperfect conceptions of their time, and who were sometimes overwhelmed by the thoughts crowding in upon them, there is one at least whose religious life was in perfect harmony with His earthly life, who spoke as one having authority, but with the sublime calm and selfcontrol of a Sage, the Master of all, because He was ever master of Himself.

Religion develops because it is the

Let me sum up what I have said. through the medium of persons, most personal attribute of man. It must constantly become man in order to continue to be his possession and to grow up with him. For such creative religious spirits stamp the impress of their genius upon a long period of development; renewed and focussed in them, religious life radiates from them throughout the succeeding ages. This is the great law of the continuity of religious development.

LECTURE X.

ESSENTIALS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGION.

WE now approach the close of our inquiry into the development of religion, and we must to-day sum up its results. One great question still remains to be answered, Wherein does the development of religion. essentially consist? This is not the same question as we asked at the outset, as to the nature of development in general, including that of religion also. Development, as we saw, is not a supersession of the old by something new, something different, whether heterogeneous or not, but is growth from a germ, in which lies latent everything that afterwards springs from it; and by the development of religion we do not signify a vague abstraction, but simply the development of men, and therefore of all mankind, as religious. It was necessary to begin with this definition in order that we might know the precise subject of our research. But the above answer does not solve the question as

to the essential elements in the development of religion. The real answer to that question we can only now give as the result of our whole survey.

The problem we have been occupied with seemed to us so complex and intricate as to be incapable of a very brief solution. We required to trace the development of religion, not only in its successive phases or stages, but also in its different directions, to inquire how far it is connected with general development, and to try to discover some of the laws it obeys, or at least to study the facts from which such laws may be deduced. The question now is, What unity is to be found in all these facts? what is the fundamental law on which the various other laws depend? what in its essence is religious development itself? Now that I am prepared to answer the question, I am more than ever conscious of the fact that my answer will be only a well-meant attempt, but one which I hope will bring us a little nearer our goal.

I shall first clear the way by rejecting several answers that have already been given, as they seem to me unsatisfactory.

The progress of religion, it has been said, simply means progress in morality; and the development of religion consists solely in its becoming more ethical. Such an assertion was to be expected from those who almost entirely identify religion with morality, and who regard it merely as a peculiar form of moral

VOL. I.

life, a higher form according to some, but a lower

according to others.

But this does not satisfy us,

who do not deny the close connection between morality and religion, but are convinced that each has its own sphere, and that, though not separate, they must be distinguished from each other. We are referred to the ethical character of the highest religions, as compared with the more naturalistic character of the lower. We have admitted that character by giving the name of ethical to one of the two great categories into which we divided religions according to their stage of development. But you will remember that we only called them so for the sake of brevity, and that we described them as ethico-spiritualistic revelation-religions, from which it is obvious that we do not regard the ethical element as their sole feature. Moreover, I have expressly stated that, while these religions are the highest we know, and the highest existing, we can well imagine a still higher form, which will doubtless present somewhat different characteristics. All the higher religions we know have arisen out of an ethical revival, but we must not confound that which gives the last and most forcible impulse to a reform with the reform itself. All progress, not only in morality, but in knowledge and science, in philosophy and rational perception, in art and sense of beauty, necessarily exerts an influence upon that of religion,

« السابقةمتابعة »