RELIGION AND PERSONALITY 421 



was therefore, his brother's keeper. Fearful punishment followed a 

 violation of this law. When religious development reveals the one 

 God and Lord of all, the sense of universal brotherhood, through a 

 universal paternity, was sure to follow. So at length love is recog- 

 nized as the law of spiritual gravitation which regulates the universe 

 of spirit. D. G. Brinton, in The Religious Sentiment, has strongly set 

 forth the place of love in religion, affirming that love is the emotion 

 above all others which " reveals the character of the religious senti- 

 ment." If this be the conclusion of a scientific study of religion, 

 a truth with which every student of Christianity is perfectly famil- 

 iar, then religion must have the credit of giving to man the funda- 

 mental working principle of personal life, a love which not only 

 " worketh no ill to his neighbor " and " seeketh not its own," but 

 which gives its very life for the world, revealing that the immortality 

 of life is the immortality of love. 



It is love that has given the world all that is best, truest, sweetest 

 in human life and character. It is love that has stimulated the 

 loftiest purposes and dictated the noblest achievements. It is love 

 alone that has made life worth the living and brought ebbing hopes 

 into being again. 



And so religion has cared for the helpless and broken, buried 

 the dead, built schools and asylums. It has elevated womanhood, 

 as men have recognized that "the eternal w r omanly leads us on," 

 advancing man from the sterner virtues of courage, strength, and 

 endurance to the tenderer graces of humility, self-surrender, mercy, 

 love. 



All this means that religion has been the prime factor in enabling 

 man to find his true place in the universe, so that God, man, and 

 nature work out their perfect harmony. 



This leads to the statement that religion has been the great ener- 

 gizing and enriching agency in the development of the personal 

 character. " Religion," said Bacon, " is the spice which is meant 

 to keep life from corruption." But it is more than an aseptic and 

 moral sterilizer. It has energized and fertilized the will of man, 

 elevated his sentiments, and enkindled his intellectual life. 



What has religion done for the human will? Many, with Kant, 

 would find the seat of religion here, in a " categorical imperative," 

 which speaks the final " thou must." We shall not undertake to 

 show how much cannot be accounted for upon this theory of religion. 

 That the will is powerfully concerned all will admit. In those fea- 

 tures of the religious life summed up in cult and in conduct the will 

 is potent. Indeed, here we stumble upon the anomaly that the 

 excessive ritualist and the preacher of an ethical culture, at the very 

 opposite poles in spirit and practice, are at one in their root idea, 

 namely, that religion is largely a performance of the will, manifesting 



