Part 5 (2/2)

Will this study of religion from the psychological standpoint prove to be an ally to the Christian Faith, or will it put new weapons into the hands of its enemies? It may be too early for a positive answer, but the advertising value of the new movement cannot be denied, and several specific entries at least may be made on the credit side of the ledger.

The materials for religious psychology have been drawn mainly from Christian biography and Christian experience. Impressive stories of conversion, gathered from the ages of Christendom and from the work of city and foreign missions, have strengthened the argument from Christian experience. Taken from religious biographies and devotional books and missionary annals and modern questionnaires, the testimony of the saints of all ages has been marshalled as they have told what the Lord has done for their souls. The very fact that it has been worth while to write psychologies of religion is in itself significant. ”Christianity,” says Eucken, ”has been the first to give the soul a history; in comparison with the interest of the soul, it has reduced all events in the outer world to mere incidentals, according to the words of Jesus: 'What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul.'”[92]

92: ”Konnen wir noch Christen sein?” 1911, p. 10; ”Can We Still Be Christians?” p. 9.

Separating as far as possible the descriptive from the metaphysical aspects of our subject, we may consider I. The Psychology of Religious Experience; and II. The Metaphysical Implicates of Religious Experience.

Under the first head we shall find that the study of religious experience has been favourable to the Christian Faith in at least four respects.

I. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

I. The scientific study of religion shows that religion belongs to the essence rather than the accidents of human nature. Man is the praying, the believing, and the hoping-to-survive animal. It is not the office of psychology to prove the existence of G.o.d, but it may show that belief in His existence is natural to man, and is favoured by natural selection.

It may show that religious experiences have, in the words of James, ”enormous biological worth,”[93] and that, to quote again the same writer, ”the strenuous type of character will on the battle-field of human history always outwear the easy-going type, and religion will drive irreligion to the wall.”[94]

93: ”Varieties of Religious Experience,” p. 509.

94: ”The Will to Believe,” p. 213.

One evidence of the normality of religious faith is the vacuum or sense of loss which continues to be felt in the life of those who have lost it. If we need G.o.d, as Augustine says, in order that the soul may live, it is natural that there should be a feeling of spiritual starvation without G.o.d. The two cla.s.sical instances of this ”aching void the world can never fill” are those of two well-known scientists, one writing in the eclipse, apparently permanent, of his faith, and the other after its restoration. Says W. K. Clifford: ”Whether or no it be reasonable and satisfying to the conscience, it cannot be doubted that theistic belief is a comfort and a solace to those who hold it, and that the loss of it is a very painful loss.... We have seen the spring sun s.h.i.+ne out of an empty heaven, to light up a soulless earth; we have felt with utter loneliness that the Great Companion is dead. Our children, it may be hoped, will know that sorrow only by the reflex light of a wondering compa.s.sion.”[95] It is a sad consolation that children will be spared the loss, because they have not known the joy, of religious faith.

95: ”Lectures and Essays,” 2d ed., p. 389.

Romanes, during the eclipse of his faith, found that success, intellectual distraction, reputation and artistic pleasure were ”all taken together and well sweetened to taste ... but as high confectionery to a starving man.” He adds: ”I take it then as unquestionably true that this whole negative side of the subject proves a vacuum in the soul of man which nothing can fill save faith in G.o.d.”[96] Such modern instances show the normality of religion, and are an impressive commentary upon the words of the Psalmist, ”My soul is athirst for G.o.d,” and upon those of Augustine, ”Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.”

96: ”Thoughts on Religion,” 2d ed., pp. 161, 162.

The normality of religion is further shown in the instinctive turning of the soul to G.o.d, or to some higher power, in times of crisis and danger.

The religious consciousness is best interrogated, not in times of mechanical routine or worldly preoccupation, but in those moments when we seem to ourselves to be most religious, in moments of clearest insight, or of deepest emotion, or of some crisis in action. The story of one of the survivors of the _t.i.tanic_ disaster is in point:

”The second thing that stands out prominently in the emotions produced by the disaster is that in moments of urgent need men and women turn for help to something entirely outside themselves.... To those men standing on the top deck with the boats all lowered, and still more when the boats had all left, there came the realization that human resources were exhausted and human avenues of escape closed. With it came the appeal to whatever consciousness each had of a Power that had created the universe. After all, some Power had made the brilliant stars above ...

had made each one of the pa.s.sengers with ability to think and act, with the best proof, after all, of being created--knowledge of their own existence; and now, if at any time, was the time to appeal to that Power. When the boats had left and it was seen the s.h.i.+p was going down rapidly, men stood in groups on the deck engaged in prayer, and later, as some of them lay on the overturned collapsible boat, they repeated together over and over again the Lord's Prayer.... And this was not because it was a habit.... It must have been because each one ... saw laid bare his utter dependence on something that had made him and given him power to think.... Men do practical things in times like that: they would not waste a moment on mere words if those words were not an expression of the most intensely real conviction of which they were capable. Again, like the feeling of heroism, this appeal is innate and intuitive, and it certainly has its foundation on a knowledge--largely concealed, no doubt--of immortality. I think this must be obvious: there could be no other explanation of such a general sinking of all the emotions of the human mind expressed in a thousand different ways by a thousand different people in favour of this single appeal.”[97]

97: ”The Loss of the _SS. t.i.tanic_: Its Story and Its Lessons,” by Lawrence Beasley, B. A. (Cantab.), Scholar of Gonville and Caius College, one of the survivors. Boston, 1912.

The instinctive place and biological value of religion in human life, the restlessness and hunger of the soul without religion, show that it is not an excrescence upon human nature. The exclamation of a recent writer seems justified: ”The age of scientific materialism is past....

The religious instinct has been adjudged normal.”[98]

98: J. B. Carter: ”The Religious Life of Ancient Rome,” p. 95.

2. The study of religious experience has shown the power of religion (and certainly for the most part its power for good) in the life of the individual and of society. The psychologists have thrust upon our attention with unmistakable emphasis the _fact_ of conversion, however they may theorize about the fact. The recorded experiences of saints, reformers and missionaries, the testimony collected by the questionnaires and the cases of conversion described in such books as Begbie's ”Twice-Born Men” have shown beyond a peradventure that men _can_ be born again. It only remains for the church to say, ”Ye _must_ be born again.”

The records show that men who are the slaves of appet.i.te and vice, too degraded to be reached by appeals to pride or to prudence, can by the gospel be restored to hope and self-respect and to lives of singular usefulness. As Begbie says: ”There is no medicine, no Act of Parliament, no moral treatise, and no invention of philanthropy, which can transform a man radically bad into a man radically good.... Science despairs of these people, p.r.o.nounces them 'hopeless' and 'incurable.'

Politicians find themselves at the end of their resources. Philanthropy begins to wonder whether its charity could not be turned into a more fertile channel. The law speaks of 'criminal cla.s.ses.' It is only religion that is not in despair about this ma.s.s of profitless evil dragging at the heels of progress--the religion which still believes in miracle.”[99]

99: ”Twice-Born Men,” 1909, pp. 18f.

<script>