RELIGION AND PERSONALITY 



BY EDWARD BAGBY POLLARD 



[Edward Bagby Pollard, Professor in Crozer Theological Seminary, Chester, Penn- 

 sylvania, since 1906. b. Stevensville, Virginia, 1864. Student, University of 

 Berlin, 1896 ; B.A. Richmond College, Virginia, 1884; M.A. ibid. 1886; Ph.D. 

 Yale University, 1893; D.D. Richmond College, 1901. Pastor, New Haven, 

 Connecticut, 1890-93; Pastor, Roanoke, Virginia, 1893-96; Professor of Bibli- 

 cal Literature and Semitic Languages, Columbian University, District of 

 Columbia, 1897-1902; Professor of Biblical Literature in Georgetown College, 

 Georgetown, Kentucky, 1902-06. Author of Oriental Women; Paul Judson; 

 and other works.} 



" LOOK out for a people entirely devoid of religion," said Hume, 

 " and if you find them at all, be assured they are but a few degrees 

 removed from the brutes." But the truth is, such people are not 

 found. Some races, like marble, are capable of much polish; others, 

 like granite, possess a high resistance to crushing; yet others, like 

 sandstone, are readily shaped by external agencies. Some races are 

 intellectual, some emotional, some progressive, and some conserva- 

 tive; but all are religious. 



Religions are many, as there are " gods many and lords many." 

 But beneath all religions lies religion. It is not an incident nor an 

 accident; it is not the invention of priestcraft nor of policy, but the 

 very outgoing of human nature itself. Religion is the most persistent 

 and universal fact of human life. 



It is impossible to deal with elements more vital than those 

 brought before us in the subject assigned me; for religion is uni- 

 versal and imperishable, and personality is the fundamental fact of 

 all existence; it is the ultimate reality. 



The leading types of religion have already been discussed before 

 this Congress. The varieties and the vagaries of religion do not fall 

 in our purview. I am told that certain persons have facetiously 

 dubbed Professor James's stimulating and informing volume upon 

 Varieties of Religious Experience with the title " Wild Religions I 

 Have Known." In dealing with the influence of religion upon 

 personal life, it is not the extraordinary and exceptional, but the 

 general and universal features of the religion that will claim our 

 attention. 



In primitive conditions of community life an irreligious man did 

 not exist. As Robertson Smith says, in his Religion of the Semites: 

 " Individual men were more or less religious, as men now are more or 

 less patriotic, but there was no such thing as an absolutely irreligious 

 man." This may be said of primitive peoples generally. Religion 

 was largely a matter of tribal import rather than of personal life and 

 individual choice. After a while, however, the individual emerges; 



