Thoughts on Life and Religion

Hibbert Lectures.

Who, if he is honest towards himself, could say that the religion of his manhood was the same as that of his childhood, or the religion of his old age the same as the religion of his manhood? It is easy to deceive ourselves, and to say that the most perfect faith is a childlike faith. Nothing can be truer, and the older we grow the more we learn to understand the wisdom of a childlike faith. But before we can learn that, we have first to learn another lesson, namely, to put away childish things. There is the same glow about the setting sun as there is about the rising sun; but there lies between the two a whole world, a journey through the whole sky, and over the whole earth.

Hibbert Lectures.

I hope the time will come when the subterranean area of human religion will be rendered more and more accessible, … and that the Science of Religion, which at present is but a desire and a seed, will in time become a fulfilment, a plenteous harvest. When that time of harvest has come, when the deepest foundations of all the religions of the world have been laid free and restored, who knows but that those very foundations may serve once more, like the catacombs, or like the crypts beneath our old cathedrals, as a place of refuge for those who, to whatever creed they may belong, long for something better, purer, older, and truer than what they can find in the statutable sacrifices, services, and sermons of the days in which their lot on earth has been cast; some who have learnt to put away childish things, call them genealogies, legends, miracles, or oracles, but who cannot part with the childlike faith of their heart. Each believer may bring down with him into that quiet crypt what he values most, his own pearl of great price—the Hindu, his innate disbelief in this world, his unhesitating belief in another world; the Buddhist, his perception of an eternal law, his submission to it, his gentleness, his pity; the Mohammedan, if nothing else, his sobriety; the Jew, his clinging through good and evil days to the one God, who loveth righteousness and whose name is 'I am'; the Christian, that which is better than all, if those who doubt it would only try it—our love of God, call Him what you like, the infinite, the invisible, the immortal, the father, the highest Self, above all, and through all, and in all, manifested in our love of man, our love of the living, our love of the dead, our living and undying love.

Hibbert Lectures.

If we see the same doctrines, sometimes uttered even in the very same words, by the Apostles, and by what people call the false prophets, of the heathen world, we need not grudge them these precious pearls. When two religions say the same thing, it is not always the same thing; but even if it is, should we not rather rejoice and try with all our might to add to what may be called the heavenly dowry of the human race, the common stock of truth which, as we are told, is not far from every one of us, if only we feel after it and find it?

Gifford Lectures, I.

Religion, when looked upon not as supernatural, but as thoroughly natural to man, has assumed a new meaning and a higher dignity when studied as an integral part of that historical evolution which has made man what he is, and what from the very first he was meant to be. Is it no comfort to know that at no time and in no part of the world, has God left Himself without witness, that the hand of God was nowhere beyond the reach of the outstretched hands of babes and sucklings; nay, that it was from those rude utterances out of the mouth of babes and sucklings, that is, of savages and barbarians, that has been perfected in time the true praise of God? To have looked for growth and evolution in history as well as in nature is no blame, and has proved no loss to the present or to the last century; and if the veil has as yet been but little withdrawn from the Holy of Holies, those who come after us will have learnt at least this one lesson, that this lifting of the veil which was supposed to be the privilege of priests, is no longer considered as a sacrilege, if attempted by any honest seekers after truth.

Gifford Lectures, I.

Religion consists in the perception of the infinite under such manifestations as are able to influence the moral character of man.

Gifford Lectures, I.

No opinion is true simply because it has been held either by the greatest intellects or by the largest number of human beings at different periods in the history of the world. No one can spend years in the study of the religions of the world, beginning with the lowest and ending with the highest forms, no one can watch the sincerity of religious endeavour, the warmth of religious feeling, the nobleness of religious conduct, among races whom we are inclined to call pagan or savage, without learning at all events a lesson of humility. Anybody, be he Jew, Christian, Mohammedan, or Brahman, if he has a spark of modesty left, must feel that it would be nothing short of a miracle that his own religion alone should be perfect throughout, while that of every other believer should be false or wrong from beginning to end.

Gifford Lectures, I.

The more we study the history of the religions of the world, the clearer it becomes that there is really no religion which could be called an individual religion, in the sense of a religion created, as it were de novo, or rather ab ovo, by one single person. This may seem strange, and yet it is really most natural. Religion, like language, is everywhere an historical growth, and to invent a completely new religion would be as hopeless a task as to invent a completely new language. Nor do the founders of the great historical religions of the world ever claim this exclusive authorship. On the contrary, most of them disclaim in the strongest terms the idea that they have come either to destroy, or to build a completely new temple.

Gifford Lectures, I.

The whole world in its wonderful history has passed through the struggle for life, the struggle for eternal life; and every one of us, in his own not less wonderful history, has had to pass through the same wonderful struggle: for, without it, no religion, whatever its sacred books may be, will find in any human heart that soil in which alone it can strike root and on which alone it can grow and bear fruit. We must all have our own bookless religion, if the sacred books, whatever they may be, are to find a safe and solid foundation within ourselves. No temple can stand without that foundation, and it is because that foundation is so often neglected that the walls of the temple become unsafe and threaten to fall.

Gifford Lectures, I.

The heart and mind and soul of man are the same under every sky, in all the varying circumstances of human life; and it would be awful to believe that any human beings should have been deprived of that light 'which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.' It is that light which lighteth every man, and which has lighted all the religions of the world, call them bookless or literate, human or divine, natural or supernatural, which alone can dispel the darkness of doubt and fear that has come over the world. What our age wants more than anything else is Natural Religion. Whatever meaning different theologians may attach to Supernatural Religion, history teaches us that nothing is so natural as the supernatural. But the supernatural must always be superimposed on the natural. Supernatural religion without natural religion is a house built on sand, and when, as in our days, the rain of doubt descends, and the floods of criticism come, and the winds of unbelief and despair blow and beat upon that house, that house will fall because it was not founded on the rock of bookless religion, of natural religion, of eternal religion.

Gifford Lectures, I.

Every religion, being the property of the young and the old, the wise and the foolish, must always be a kind of compromise, and, while protesting against real corruptions and degradations, we must learn to bear with those whose language differs from our own, and trust that in spite of the tares which have sprung up during the night, some grains of wheat will ripen towards the harvest in every honest heart.

Gifford Lectures, II.

In all the fundamentals of religion we are neither better nor worse than our neighbours, neither more wise nor more unwise than all the members of that great family who have been taught to know themselves as children of one and the same Father in Heaven.

Gifford Lectures, II.

What can a study of Natural Religion teach us? Why, it teaches us that religion is natural, is real, is inevitable, is universal. Is that nothing? Is it nothing to know that there is a solid rock on which all religion, call it natural or supernatural, is founded? Is it nothing to learn from the annals of history that God has not left Himself without witness in that He did good, and gave us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts, and the hearts of the whole human race, with food and gladness?

Gifford Lectures, II.

While on the one side a study of Natural Religion teaches us that much of what we are inclined to class as natural, to accept as a matter of course, is in reality full of meaning, is full of God, is in fact truly miraculous, it also opens our eyes to another fact, namely, that many things which we are inclined to class as supernatural, are in reality perfectly natural, perfectly intelligible, nay inevitable, in the growth of every religion.

Gifford Lectures, II.

The real coincidences between all the religions of the world teach us that all religions spring from the same soil—the human heart; that they all look to the same ideals, and that they are all surrounded by the same dangers and difficulties. Much that is represented to us as supernatural in the annals of the ancient religions of the world becomes perfectly natural from this point of view.

Gifford Lectures, II.

To those who see no difficulties in their own religion, the study of other religions will create no new difficulties. It will only help them to appreciate more fully what they already possess. For with all that I have said in order to show that other religions also contain all that is necessary for salvation, it would be simply dishonest on my part were I to hide my conviction that the religion taught by Christ, free as yet from all ecclesiastical fences and entrenchments, is the best, the purest, the truest religion the world has ever seen.

Gifford Lectures, II.

To expect that religion could ever be placed again beyond the reach of scientific treatment or honest criticism, shows an utter misapprehension of the signs of the times, and would, after all, be no more than to set up private judgment against private judgment. If the inalienable rights of private judgment, that is, of honesty and truth, were more generally recognised, the character of religious controversy would at once be changed. It is restriction that provokes resentment, and thus embitters all discussions on religious subjects.

Gifford Lectures, III.

So far from being dishonest, the distinction between a higher and a lower form of religion is in truth the only honest recognition of the realities of life. If to a philosophic mind religion is a spiritual love of God, and the joy of his full consciousness of the spirit of God within him, what meaning can such words convey to the millions of human beings who nevertheless want a religion, a positive, authoritative, or revealed religion, to teach them that there is a God, and that His commands must be obeyed without questioning?

Gifford Lectures, III.

People ask what can be gained by a comprehensive study of religions, by showing that, as yet, no race has been discovered without some word for what is not visible, not finite, not human, for something superhuman and divine. Some theologians go even so far as to resent the discovery of the universality of such a belief. They are anxious to prove that human reason alone could never have arrived at a conception of God. They would much rather believe that God has left Himself without witness than that a belief in something higher than the Finite could spring up in the human heart from gratitude to Him who gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.

Gifford Lectures, III.

Physical religion, beginning in a belief in agents behind the great phenomena of nature, reached its highest point when it had led the human mind to a belief in one Supreme Agent or God, whatever his name might be. It was supposed that this God could be implored by prayers and pleased by sacrifices. He was called the father of gods and men. Yet even in his highest conception, he was no more than what Cardinal Newman defined God to be. 'I mean by the Supreme Being,' he wrote, 'one who is simply self-dependent, and the only being who is such. I mean that he created all things out of nothing, and could destroy them as easily as he made them, and that, in consequence, he is separated from them by an abyss, and incommunicable in all his attributes.' This abyss separating God from man remains at the end of Physical Religion. It constitutes its inherent weakness. But this very weakness becomes in time a source of strength, for from it sprang a yearning for better things. Even the God of the Jews, in His unapproachable majesty, though He might be revered and loved by man during His life on earth, could receive, as it were, a temporary allegiance only, for 'the dead cannot praise God, neither any that go down into darkness!' God was immortal, a man was mortal; and Physical Religion could not throw a bridge over the abyss that separated the two. Real religion, however, requires more than a belief in God, it requires a belief in man also, and an intimate relation between God and man, at all events in a life to come. There is in man an irrepressible desire for continued existence. It shows itself in life in what we may call self-defence. It shows itself at the end of life and at the approach of death, in the hope of immortality.

Gifford Lectures, III.

So long as we look on the history of the human race as something that might or might not have been, we cannot wonder that the student of religion should prefer to form his opinions of the nature of religion and the laws of its growth from the masterpiece of Thomas Aquinas, the Summa Sacræ Theologiæ, rather than from the Sacred Books of the East. But when we have learnt to recognise in history the realisation of a rational purpose, when we have learnt to look upon it as in the truest sense of the word a Divine Drama, the plot revealed in it ought to assume in the eyes of a philosopher also, a meaning and a value far beyond the speculations of even the most enlightened and logical theologians.

Gifford Lectures, IV.

The question is whether there is, or whether there is not, hidden in every one of the sacred books, something that could lift up the human heart from this earth to a higher world, something that could make man feel the omnipresence of a higher Power, something that could make him shrink from evil and incline to good, something to sustain him in the short journey through life, with its bright moments of happiness, and its long hours of terrible distress.

Preface, Sacred Books of the East.

It has been truly said, and most emphatically, by Dr. Newman, that neither a belief in God by itself, nor a belief in the soul by itself, would constitute religion, and that real religion is founded on a true perception of the relation of the soul to God, and of God to the soul.

Gifford Lectures, IV.

It may be truly said that the founders of the religions of the world have all been bridge-builders. As soon as the existence of a Beyond, of a Heaven above the earth, of Powers above us and beneath us, had been recognised, a great gulf seemed to be fixed between what was called by various names, the earthly and the heavenly, the material and the spiritual, the phenomenal and nomenal, or best of all, the visible and invisible world, and it was the chief object of religion to unite these two worlds again, whether by the arches of hope and fear, or by the iron chains of logical syllogisms.

Gifford Lectures, IV.

Religion, in order to be real religion, a man's own religion, must be searched for, must be discovered, must be conquered. If it is simply inherited, or accepted as a matter of course, it often happens that in later years it falls away, and has either to be reconquered, or to be replaced by another religion.

Autobiography.

Religion is growth, never finished. From the lowest to the highest stages it is growth, not willed only, nor given only, but both. The lowest stages may seem very imperfect to us, but they are all the more important. Language and mythology show us the old path on which man travelled from Nature to God.

MS.

There is no lesson which at the present time seems more important than to learn that in every religion there are precious grains; that we must draw in every religion a broad distinction between what is essential and what is not, between the eternal and the temporary, between the divine and the human, and that though the non-essential may fill many volumes, the essential can often be comprehended in a few words, but words on which 'hang all the law and the prophets.'

Preface, Sacred Books of the East.

Religions were meant to be many, like languages. To us, one language for the whole human race would seem to be far better; but it was not to be. Each language was to be a school for each race, a talent committed to each nation. And so it is with religion. There is truth in all of them, the whole truth in none. Let each one cherish his own, purify his own, and throw away what is dead and decaying. But to give up one's religion is like giving up one's life. Even the lowest savage must keep his own old faith in God, when he becomes converted to Christianity, or he will have lost the living and life-giving root of his faith. If people would only learn to look for what is good in all religions, how far more beautiful the world would appear in their eyes. They dig hard enough to get the ore from out a mine, they sift it, smelt it, purify it, and then keep the small pieces of gold they have got with all this trouble, forgetting the scoriae and all the refuse. That is what we must do as students of religion; but we do the very contrary—we hug the scoriae and shut our eyes to the glittering rays of gold. Jews and Christians are worse in that respect than all other people. It may be because their religions are freer from human impurities than all other religions. But why should that make them blind to what is really good in other religions, why should it blind them so much that they look upon other religions as the work of the Devil? The power of evil has had its work in all religions, our own not excepted—but the power of goodness prevails everywhere. Till we know that, life and history seem intolerable. It would not put an end to missionary labour, it would only make it more a labour of love, less painful to those whom we wish to win, not away from their God, but back to their God, Him whom they ignorantly worship, and whom we should declare unto them, according to our own light, such as it is, less dark than theirs on many points, but yet dark, as those know best who, like St. Paul, have striven hardest to look through the glass of our own weak human mind.

MS.

If people would only learn to see that there is really a religion beyond all religions, that each man must have his own religion which he has conquered for himself, and that we must learn to tolerate religion wherever we find it! Christianity would be a perfect religion, if it did not go beyond the simple words of Christ, and if, even in these words, we made full allowance for the time and place and circumstances in which they were spoken—that is, if we simply followed Christ where He wishes us to follow Him. We have gone far beyond those times and circumstances in many things, but in what is most essential we are still far behind the teaching of Christ. How many call themselves Christians who have no idea how difficult it is to be a Christian, a follower of Christ! It is easy enough to repeat creeds, and to work ourselves into a frame of mind when miracles seem most easy.

MS.

It was the duty of the Apostles and of the early Christians in general to stand forth in the name of the only true God, and to prove to the world that their God had nothing in common with the idols worshipped at Athens and Ephesus. It was the duty of the early converts to forswear all allegiance to their former deities, and if they could not at once bring themselves to believe that the gods whom they had worshipped had no existence at all, they were naturally led on to ascribe to them a kind of demoniacal nature, and to curse them as the offspring of that new principle of Evil with which they had become acquainted in the doctrines of the early Church.... Through the whole of St. Augustine's works, and through all the works of earlier Christian divines, there runs the same spirit of hostility blinding them to all that may be good, and true, and sacred, and magnifying all that is bad, false, and corrupt, in the ancient religions of mankind. Only the Apostles and their immediate disciples venture to speak in a different and, no doubt, in a more truly Christian spirit of the old forms of worships.... What can be more convincing, more powerful, than the language of St. Paul at Athens?

Science of Language.

Those who believe that there is a God, and that He created heaven and earth, and that He ruleth the world by His unceasing providence, cannot believe that millions of human beings, all created like ourselves in the image of God, were, in their time of ignorance, so utterly abandoned that their whole religion was falsehood, their whole worship a farce, their whole life a mockery. An honest and independent study of the religions of the world will teach us that it was not so, … that there is no religion which does not contain some grains of truth. Nay, it will teach us more; it will teach us to see in the history of the ancient religions, more clearly than anywhere else, the Divine education of the human race.

Science of Religion.

The Divine, if it is to reveal itself at all to us, will best reveal itself in our own human form. However far the human may be from the Divine, nothing on earth is nearer to God than man, nothing on earth more godlike than man. And as man grows from childhood to old age, the idea of the Divine must grow with us from the cradle to the grave, from grace to grace. A religion which is not able thus to grow and live with us as we grow and live, is dead already. Definite and unvarying uniformity, so far from being a sign of honesty and life, is always a sign of dishonesty and death. Every religion, if it is to be a bond between the wise and the foolish, the old and the young, must be pliant, must be high and deep and broad; bearing all things, believing all things, hoping all things, enduring all things. The more it is so, the greater its vitality, the greater the strength and warmth of its embrace.

Hibbert Lectures.

REVELATION

True inspiration is, and always has been, the spirit of truth within, and this is but another name for the spirit of God. It is truth that makes inspiration, not inspiration that makes truth. Whoever knows what truth is knows also what inspiration is: not only theopneustos, blown into the soul by God, but the very voice of God, the real presence of God, the only presence in which we, as human beings, can ever perceive Him.

Autobiography.

There is nothing in the idea of revelation that excludes progress, for whatever definition of revelation we may adopt, it always represents a communication between the Divine on one side and the Human on the other. Let us grant that the Divine element in revelation, that is, whatever of truth there is in revelation, is immutable, yet the human element, the recipient, must always be liable to the accidents and infirmities of human nature. That human element can never be eliminated in any religion.... To ignore that human element in all religions is like ignoring the eye as the recipient and determinant of the colours of light. We know more of the sun than our forefathers, though the same sun shone on them that shines on us; and if astronomy has benefited by its telescopes, … theology also ought not to despise whatever can strengthen the far-sightedness of human reason in its endeavour to gain a truer and purer idea of the Divine. A veil will always remain. But as in every other pursuit, so in religion also, we want less and less of darkness, more and more of light; we want, call it life, or growth, or development, or progress; we do not want mere rest, mere stagnation, mere death.