54 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



ligious view of life is still upheld. But it is quite 

 possible that a rule of life, once thoughtfully 

 constituted, should be acknowledged in common 

 over the whole range of social duty by persons 

 simply ethical and by those who are also reli- 

 gious. 



But though the decay of religion may leave 

 the institutes of morality intact, it drains off their 

 inward power. The devout faith of men ex- 

 presses and measures the intensity of their moral 

 nature, and it cannot be lost without a remission 

 of enthusiasm and, under this low pressure, the 

 successful reentrance of importunate desires and 

 clamorous passions which had been driven back. 

 To' believe in an ever-living and perfect Mind, 

 supreme over the universe, is to invest moral 

 distinctions with immensity and eternity, and lift 

 them from the provincial stage of human society 

 to the imperishable theatre of all being. When 

 planted thus in the very substance of things, they 

 justify and support the ideal estimates of the 

 conscience ; they deepen every guilty shame ; 

 they guarantee every righteous hope ; and they 

 help the will with a divine casting-vote in every 

 balance of temptation. The sanctity thus given 

 to the claims of duty, and the interest that 

 gathers around the play of character, appear to 

 me more important elements in the power of re- 

 ligion than its direct sanctions of hope and fear 

 Yet to these also it is hardly possible to deny 

 great weight, not only as extending the range of 

 personal interests, but as the answer of reality to 

 the retributory verdicts of the moral sense. Can- 

 cel these beliefs, and morality will be left reason- 

 able still, but paralyzed; possible to tempera- 

 ments comparatively passionless, but with no 

 grasp on vehement and poetic natures ; and 

 gravitating toward the simply prudential wher- 

 ever it maintains its ground. 



Historical experience appears to confirm this 

 estimate. In no race (notwithstanding conspicu- 

 ous individual exceptions) have the excesses of 

 sensual passion been so kept in check as among 

 the Jews. There is no more striking feature in 

 their literature during the moral declension of 

 Greek and Roman society (e. g., in the Sibylline 

 Oracles) than the horror which it expresses of 

 the pervading dissoluteness of the pagan world. 

 It certainly cannot be said that the problem was 

 rendered easy by the coolness of the Jewish 

 temperament. The phenomena of Christendom 

 present a more complicated tissue. .But a just 

 analysis yields, I believe, the same result, and 

 attests the force of religious conviction as the 

 only successful antagonist, on any large scale, 



of the animal impulses. True it is that, in the 

 very presence of the Church, and even among its 

 representatives, gross vices have at times pre- 

 vailed. But. these have been hollow times, in 

 which, with large classes of persons, the outer 

 shell of religion sheltered no sincere life, and 

 the private habits betrayed the inward disinte- 

 gration which policy or indifference concealed. 

 To test the power of religion, we must limit our- 

 selves to cases where that power is not effete. 

 In the Puritan families of the seventeenth cen- 

 tury, among the present Catholic peasantry of 

 Ireland, throughout the Society of Friends, and 

 in the Wesleyan classes, it can hardly be denied 

 that the control of irregular desires has been at- 

 tained with an exceptional ease and complete- 

 ness. 



One source of this distinctive power yet re- 

 mains to be indicated. A simply conscientious 

 man may surrender himself unreservedly to the 

 sense of moral obligation, and be so possessed 

 by it as to feel it more than reasonable, and own 

 a certain sacredness in its appeal. Duty, honor, 

 self-forgetfulness in others' good, may obtain the 

 real command of such a one. But the persua- 

 sive force with which the right speaks to him is 

 beyond all intellectual measure ; it stirs him in 

 depths he cannot reach ; its heat is in excess of 

 its light ; it is something mystic which must have 

 him, but of which he can render no account. 

 Here, in truth, is religion pressing into life, only 

 with form still indistinct, and its organism of 

 thought not yet differentiated and articulate. Let 

 it complete its development, and what change 

 will ensue ? Once rendered conscious of the Su- 

 preme Source of his moral pei'ceptions, the re- 

 sponsible agent no longer obeys a pressure out 

 of the dark, but rather a drawing toward higher 

 light ; for an impersonal drift of Nature is sub- 

 stituted a profound personal veneration, and 

 enthusiasm is turned from a blind nobleness into 

 the clear allegiance of living affection. It is not 

 without reason that this change has been treated 

 as an emergence into new life. Its vast influence 

 is attested by the whole literature of devotion, 

 and especially by its most popular element, the 

 hymns of every age from the Psalter to the 

 " Christian Year." 



Though in theory the contents of morality 

 are not altered by acquiring divine obligation, 

 the efficacy of religion is more immediately felt 

 in some parts of the character than in others. 

 The scene to which it introduces the mind is one 

 which throws it instantly into the attitude of 

 looking up toward an Infinite Perfection, whose 



