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THE. POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



of view of morality, the distinction is of course 

 of the utmost importance. But from the point 

 of view of religion there are difficulties in making 

 it. In the first place, the distinction is not made, 

 or is not understood, by religious folk in general. 

 Innumerable tracts and pretty stories impress 

 upon us that Sabbath-breaking is rather worse 

 than stealing, and leads naturally on to materi- 

 alism and murder. Less than a hundred years 

 ago sacrilege was punishable by burning in 

 France, and murder by simple decapitation. In 

 the next place, if we pick out a religion at hap- 

 hazard, we shall find that it is not at all easy to 

 divide its precepts into those which are really of 

 moral obligation and those which are indifferent 

 and of a ceremonial character. We may find 

 precepts unconnected with any ceremonial, and 

 yet positively immoral; and ceremonials may be 

 immoral in themselves, or constructively im- 

 moral, on account of their known symbolism. 

 On the whole, it seems to me most convenient to 

 draw the plain and obvious distinction between 

 those actions which a religion prescribes to all 

 its followers, whether the actions are ceremonial 

 or not, and those which are prescribed only as 

 professional actions of a sacerdotal class. The 

 latter will come under what I have called the 

 second meaning of religion, the professional acts 

 and the influence of a priesthood. In the third 

 meaning will be included all that practically 

 guides the life of a layman, in so far as this guid- 

 ance is supplied to him by his religion. 



Fourthly, and lastly, there is a meaning of 

 the word religion which has been coming more 

 and more prominently forward of late years, till 

 it has even threatened to supersede all the others. 

 Religion has been defined as morality touched 

 with emotion. I will not here adopt this defini- 

 tion, because I wish to deal with the concrete in 

 the first place, and only to pass on to the abstract 

 in so far as that previous study appears to lead 

 to it. I wish to consider the facts of religion as 

 we find them, and not ideal possibilities. " Yes, 

 but," every one will say, " if you mean my own 

 religion, it is already, as a matter of fact, moral- 

 ity touched with emotion. It is the highest 

 morality touched with the purest emotion, an 

 emotion directed toward the most worthy of ob- 

 jects." Unfortunately we do not mean your 

 religion alone, but all manner of heresies and 

 heathenisms along with it: the religions of the 

 Thug, of the Jesuit, of the South-Sea cannibal, 

 of Confucius, of the poor Indian with his un- 

 tutored mind, of the Peculiar People, of the Mor- 

 mons, and of the old cat-worshiping Egyptian. 



It must be clear that we shall restrict ourselves 

 to a very narrow circle of what are commonly 

 called religious facts, unless we include in our 

 considerations not only morality touched with 

 emotion, but also immorality touched with emo- 

 tion. In fact, what is really touched with emo- 

 tion in any case is that body of precepts for the 

 guidance of a layman's life which we have taken 

 to be the third meaning of religion. In that col- 

 lection of precepts there may be some agreeable 

 to morality, and some repugnant to it, and some 

 indifferent, but being all enjoined by the religion 

 they will all be touched by the same religious 

 emotion. Shall we then say that religion means 

 a feeling, an emotion, an habitual attitude of 

 mind toward some object or objects, or toward 

 life in general, which has a bearing upon the way 

 in which men regard the rules of conduct? I 

 think the last phrase should be left out. An ha- 

 bitual attitude of mind, of a religious character, 

 does always have some bearing upon the way in 

 which men regard the rules of conduct ; but it 

 seems sometimes as if this were an accident, and 

 not the essence of the religious feeling. Some 

 devout people prefer to have their devotion pure 

 and simple, without admixture of any such ap- 

 plication — they do not want to listen to " cauld 

 morality." And it seems as if the religious feel- 

 ing of the Greeks, and partly also of our own 

 ancestors, was so far divorced from morality that 

 it affected it only, as it were, by a side-wind, 

 through the influence of the character and ex- 

 ample of the gods. So that it seems only likely 

 to create confusion if we mix up morality with 

 this fourth meaning of religion. Sometimes re- 

 ligion means a code of precepts, and sometimes 

 it means a devotional habit of mind ; the two 

 things are sometimes connected, but also they 

 are sometimes quite distinct. But that the con- 

 nection of these two things is more and more in- 

 sisted on, that it is the key-note of the apparent 

 revival of religion which has taken place in this 

 century, is a very significant fact, about which 

 there is more to be said. 



As to the nature of this devotional habit of 

 mind, there are no doubt many who would like a 

 closer definition. But I am not at all prepared 

 to say what attitude of mind may properly be 

 called religious, and what may not. Some will 

 hold that religion must have a person for its ob- 

 ject; but Buddha was filled with religious feel- 

 ing, and yet he had no personal object. Spinoza, 

 the god-intoxicated man, had no personal object 

 for his devotion. It might be possible to frame 

 a definition which would fairly include all cases, 



