RELIGION 



6552 



RELIGION AND ITS SYSTEMS 



Rev. J. W. Oman, D.D.. Principal, Westmin- 

 ster College, Cambridge, and E. Q. Harmer 



This article concludes with a section on the extent to which the 

 various religions prevail throughout the world, a subject illustrated 

 by a colour map. See the articles on the great religions ; Buddhism ; 

 Christianity; Confucianism: Mahomedanism; those on their various 

 branches, e.g. Roman Catholic Church; and the Lives of their 

 founders. See also the entries on religious terms, e.g. Priest, and 

 on religious movements, e.g. Reformation 



The probable origin of the word 

 is the Latin rdigare, to bind, and 

 the most general mark of religion 

 is this obligation of the sacred. 

 Religion has been defined as " that 

 which deals with the relation of 

 God and man." But a really 

 comprehensive definition of the 

 term is a matter of difficulty. 



In the 18th century, when 

 religion was regarded as chiefly 

 supernatural information about 

 the deity and miraculous inter- 

 ference in events, it was not 

 impossible to define and easy to 

 describe. Then the study of it was 

 confined to the task of weighing 

 by argument the evidence for past 

 events, with the clear issue that, 

 though all religions might be false, 

 only one could be true. But, at 

 the close of the century, the 

 Romantic Movement, with its 

 sense of variety in human nature 

 and of action and progress in 

 history, discovered in religion a 

 fundamental element of mind 

 which enters into every aspect of 

 life, is a prime moving force in all 

 history, and the truth of which can 

 be measured only by the whole 

 range of spiritual values. Large 

 investigations then opened out in 

 three distinct directions. The first 

 is occupied with the actual forms 

 and faiths in which religion has 

 manifested itself, the second with 

 its special place in the human mind, 

 and the third with the nature of the 

 external reality on which it de- 

 pends. Thus we have the history, 

 the psychology, and the meta- 

 physic of religion. 



Idea of the Sacred 



But if we cannot begin with 

 definition or achieve adequate de- 

 scription, we have the greater 

 need of some distinctive mark to 

 separate what belongs to the sub- 

 ject from what is only accidentally 

 connected with it. A sufficient 

 mark is the idea of the sacred. Yet 

 this must not be conceived either 

 too narrowly or too widely. Much 

 has been truly and even effectively 

 religious which stirs no feeling 

 merely of awe in our minds, while 

 magic, though regarded with awe, 

 and many myths, were rather 

 primitive science and primitive 

 poetry than primitive religion. 



When religion is thus conceived, 

 the study of it is much more than 

 the investigation of evidence for 



the supernatural, and we can no 

 longer make a clean cut between 

 true and false religions. But this 

 does not mean that the question 

 of truth is set aside. The sacred 

 is concerned with an absolute claim 

 not to be reduced to the convenient 

 or the prudent, but valid only if the 

 values it affirms have objective 

 reality, both as the true nature of 

 man and the ultimate meaning of 

 the world. That reality, therefore, 

 alone can be the final interest in 

 any part of the study; and an 

 unbiased pursuit cannot mean, as 

 is at times assumed, an absence of 

 personal interest in the result, but 

 should mean, as in other studies, 

 that no interest we can have could 

 be forwarded except by the truth. 

 Experience and Interpretation 



If religion has to do with feel- 

 ings, and trusts, and aspirations, 

 and not merely with the rites and 

 creeds which give them expression, 

 it requires, more than most sub- 

 jects, our own experience for its 

 interpretation. Indifference to 

 truth is not the necessary equip- 

 ment for discussing religion without 

 bias. We may not start with our 

 own particular form of Chris- 

 tianity as the externally given per- 

 fect form of religion, and pick out 

 what agrees with it and dismiss the 

 rest. Yet it is only as we have a 

 higher religious experience that we 

 can hope to understand the lower. 



The history of religion now 

 covers an immense area of investi- 

 gation. On the subject of primitive 

 religion alone there is an extensive 

 literature, and the sacred books and 

 critical histories of any one great 

 religion present a formidable 

 amount of material. 



Fuller investigation has made 

 ever more doubtful the assertion 

 that races are to be found wholly 

 without religion. Without some 

 sense of the sacred, making a 

 higher demand than convenience, 

 and giving a securer trust than the 

 working of blind forces, man would 

 scarce have arrived at the stage 

 of being human. But, even if 

 some tribe were discovered too low 

 in the scale to be religious, it is 

 certain that at a very early stage 

 of culture religion appears as 

 inevitably as curiosity about the 

 world around or the attempt to 

 organize society ; and, if it thus 

 manifests itself as soon as oppor- 



RELIGION 



tunity offers, no more is necessary 

 to prove that religion belongs to 

 essential human nature. 



The study of primitive religion 

 seeks, as it were, to isolate the 

 original germ. With regard to 

 what can be achieved two mistaken 

 ideas may be entertained. The 

 first is that we may thus discover 

 the origin of religion. Even the 

 rites and ceremonies in which 

 religion first expressed itself are 

 beyond our knowing ; and we 

 have no means of discovering the 

 thoughts and feelings they ex- 

 pressed, which are the real religion. 

 But, even if we could, we still have 

 not reached the origin of religion, 

 which is, not how the idea of the 

 sacred first came into use, but how 

 it arose. That is a problem of mind, 

 and not of history. The other is 

 that the study may dispose of all 

 religion as superstitions of the 

 childhood of the race. If life's 

 higher values were evolved out of 

 it, we cannot dispose of even the 

 lowest religion as superstition. 



Evolution is not a device for get- 

 ting higher values out of lower 

 without anything being added, but 

 at best some help towards showing 

 how it was added, which still leaves 

 what is added preciselythe new, and, 

 therefore, the inexplicable. Where- 

 fore, religion, like all else that has 

 entered into human life, must be 

 estimated by what it is, and not by 

 how it came to be. Even when 

 the results offered are less ambi- 

 tious, they must be received with 

 caution. They are reached mainly 

 through ancient writings, agricul- 

 tural myths and customs, and the 

 religion of savages. But a com- 

 munity which writes and tills the 

 soil is not primitive, and the 

 childishness of the savage is no sure 

 guide for knowing the progressive 

 childhood of the civilized. Yet, in 

 spite of these difficulties, it now 

 seems reasonably certain that the 

 attitude towards the world which 

 religion requires was first related to 

 a sense of a power in things resem- 

 bling man's own life ; that the 

 awe of the sacred world was early 

 stirred by the great forces of 

 nature ; that religion was from 

 the first social in its expression and 

 the sanction of social bonds ; and 

 that it was the mother of arts, the 

 instigator of inquiry, the spring of 

 moral obligation, and possibly the 

 source of reason itself. 



Progress of Religion 

 The second branch of this his- 

 torical study deals with the pro- 

 gress of religion. It may concern it- 

 self generally with a broad survey 

 of the evolution of religious values, 

 showing how the sense of the 

 sacred detaches itself from the 

 material things which first stirred 



