The Sphere of Religion 285 



6. The Sense of the Holy 



Holy and sacred are only vaguely distinguishable in ordinary 

 usage, and that rather by some difference in the feeling associated 

 with the words than by any clear difference of application. But 

 here, as has been explained, it is proposed to use them more 

 definitely, making the sense of holiness apply to the special feeling 

 of awe or reverence which certain ideas or objects evoke, while 

 excluding from its meaning the valuation of them as of absolute 

 worth, for which the term sacred is reserved. 



In our language the " holy," used by itself, would mean some- 

 thing which stirs moral reverence. But, in such expressions as 

 the " holy edifice " or the " holy sacrament," it is still used to 

 express a vague feeling of an awe which is not of an ethical quality : 

 and the history of religion shows that this is its original meaning. 

 Even a " Holy God " did not originally mean a " God of purer 

 eyes than to behold iniquity," but an awe-inspiring being, with the 

 sense of holiness not unlike the feeling evoked by countless material 

 objects. These different types of feeling may be distinguished as 

 the " awesome holy " and the " ethical holy." 



The more primitive form of the sense of the holy is here called 

 the " awesome holy," because it is an awe so near akin to fear as 

 to give colour to the theory that fear was the source of all religion, 

 that, according to a very ancient theory, timor fecit deos. What is 

 at least most immediately obvious in it is dread of some mysterious 

 dangerous force, though a closer study shows that this is only the 

 negative side of the sense of it as exalting, stimulating, re-enforcing. 

 But even this seems to be conceived almost as a material fluid, and 

 to have no spiritual and at least no ethical significance. In view 

 of this there are writers who maintain that this primitive awesome 

 holy has no connection with the ethical holy : and there are some 

 who regard them as distinct to the end. This awe, which is held 

 to be quite apart from moral reverence, is then taken to be the 

 distinctive religious feeling. In this way, we are told, we keep 

 religion and ethics to their own departments. 



That they ought to be kept to their own departments might 

 seem to be shown by the unfortunate history of their amalgamation, 

 for religion has been made to depend upon ethics and ethics on 

 religion in ways which have wronged both. Religion has been 

 made a mere sanction of morals, whereupon it ceases to be religion ; 



