THE FUNDAMENTAL NATURE OF RELIGION 253 



value of all those for whom we labor is essentially lowered. It is not 

 merely that our lives have lost value; the life of the other, also, has 

 become comparatively worthless, and our self-sacrificing, altruistic 

 service becomes vain and irrational. We shall not ultimately be 

 capable of acts of supreme self-sacrifice on behalf of a creature 

 merely of a day. And faith essentially religious, therefore, is neces- 

 sitated, and, whether consciously or not, logically implied in all earnest 

 social service. 



And when we have thus said that a religious faith logically under- 

 lies all our reasoning, all work worth doing, all strenuous moral en- 

 deavor, and all earnest social service, we have already asserted that 

 religion is inseparable from life. Benjamin Kidd, in his study of 

 social evolution, insists that " the evolution which is slowly proceed- 

 ing in human society is not primarily intellectual, but religious in 

 character." 1 And though he uses the term " religious " in the sense 

 rather of the altruistic, his contention may surely be regarded as 

 essentially correct; for, as we have just seen, this spirit of willing 

 self-sacrifice for others builds on a faith really religious. Fairbairn's 

 conclusion is, thus, thrust upon us: " Religion is the supreme factor 

 in the organizing and regulating of our personal and collective life." 

 We can hardly take a step in any direction that we can regard as 

 really significant, without a virtual assertion of God, of the sanctity 

 of his will, and of the worth of men. 



It is but an illustration of this inevitableness of religion that, in 

 an introduction to a recent edition of Wesley's Journal, Hugh Price 

 Hughes should say: " He who desires to understand the real history 

 of the English people during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and 

 nineteenth centuries should read most carefully three books: 

 George Fox's Journal, John Wesley's Journal, and John Henry 

 Newman's Apologia pro Vita Sua. . . . The Religious Question 

 cannot be ignored. It is the Question; in the deepest sense it is the 

 only Question. It has always determined the course of history every 

 where." To similar import, Brierley says, in the preface to his 

 Problems of Living : " Spite of the modern assertion to the contrary, 

 our problems of living are finally religious, and look to religion for 

 their solution." 



Nor can this seem to the thoughtful man strange, \vhen he thinks 

 that, if religion is really communion with God, the fulfillment of that 

 personal relation most essential to man, then religion can hardly fail 

 to give the ideal conditions of the richest life. It is the great claim 

 and challenge of Christ that he is come that men " may have life, and 

 may have it abundantly." He welcomes just this test, and is willing 

 to abide the issue. He brings, he says, not limitation of life, but 

 life itself, the fullest, richest, largest life. 



1 Social Evolution, p. 263. 



