Active Religion may properly be looked upon as that portion of the struggle for life, in which use is made of the Power we have roughly characterised as psychic and superhuman, and for which other adjectives, ‘spiritual,’ ‘divine,’ for instance, are commonly used. In this biological view of Religion, its necessary and natural spring is the same as that of non-religious life, i.e. the ‘will to live’ in its multiform appearances, while the ground of differentiation between the religious and the secular is neither specific feelings nor emotions, nor yet distinctive impulses, desires, or purposes, but the nature of the force which it is attempted to press into service. The current terms, ‘religious feeling,’ ‘religious desire,’ ‘religious purpose,’ are deceptive if they are supposed to designate affective experiences, desires and purposes met with only in religious life.
The conception of the Source of Psychic Energy, without the belief in which no Religion can exist, has undergone very interesting transformations in the course of historical development. The human or animal form ascribed to the gods in the earlier Religions became less and less definite. At the same time the number of gods decreased. The culmination of this double process was Monotheism, in which the One, Eternal, Creator and Sustainer of life was no longer necessarily framed in the shape of man or beast: though still anthropopathic, he might be formless. Sympathy, love, and justice were among his attributes. In a second phase, this formless, but personal, God was gradually shorn of all the qualities and defects which make individuality. He became the passionless Absolute in which all things move and have their being. Thus, the personifying work of centuries is undone, and humanity, after having, as it were, lived throughout its infancy and youth under the controlling eye and with the active assistance of personal divinities, on reaching maturity, finds itself bereft of these sources of life. The present religious crisis marks the difficulty in the way of an adaptation to the new situation. As belief in a God seems no longer possible, man seeks an impersonal, efficient substitute, belief in which will not mean disloyalty to science. For man will have life, and have it abundantly, and he knows from experience that its sources are not only in meat and drink, but also in ‘spiritual faith.’ It is this problem which the Comtists, the Immanentists, the Ethical Culturists, the Mental Scientists are all trying to solve. Any solution will have the right to the name Religion that provides for the preservation and the perfectioning of life by means of faith in a superhuman psychic Power.
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Footnotes:
[1] The Non-Religion of the Future, p. 2.
[2] The Golden Bough, 2nd edition, i. p. 63.
[3] Outlines of a Philosophy of Religion, p. 27.
[4] The Varieties of Religious Experience, pp. 53, 38, abbreviated and rearranged.