Is this material universe self-sufficient and self-contained, or is not the “other conception,” the true one, viz. “that of a universe lying open to all manner of spiritual influences, permeated through and through with a divine spirit, guided and watched by living minds acting through the medium of law indeed, but with intelligence and love behind the law; a universe by no means self-sufficient or self-contained, but with feelers at every pore groping into another supersensuous order of existence where reigns laws hitherto unimagined by science, but laws as real and as mighty as those by which the material universe is governed?”—Sir Oliver Lodge, “The Outstanding Controversy between Science and Faith,” Hibbert Journal for October, 1902.
To the man of Western civilization, whose environment in youth was a domestic atmosphere of Sabbath-day Christian orthodoxy and week-day religious indifference along with a social atmosphere of commercial individualism and the steady pursuit of sense pleasures, it is no easy task to form a correct judgment regarding the true position of religion and its relative worth in evolution.
A study of the subject reveals that not only the more and less civilized races of mankind have each some specialized form of religion, but the non-civilized savage tribes of the earth are similarly endowed. Their worship may be degraded to the last degree, but it holds them in its grasp, and in studying these facts we are compelled to believe that humanity is so constituted that its deepest needs are only to be expressed through and by religion.
The various religions of the world must have been essential to evolution, since evolution, as applied to man, signifies the ample, thorough development of every integral part of human nature in each individual. But while recognizing religion as a necessary expression of human nature and a supreme characteristic of man, we have also to realize that its forms are as various as the distinctive differences amongst men, and that changes from time to time inevitably occur for good or evil in every religion. None are stationary, none are perfect. And the spiritual verities which lie at the base of all are constantly overlaid by superstitions, while the external forms harden and grow inoperative for good.
Now, on the theory that religion is in effect necessary to evolution, and further, that it represents fundamentally an emanation from the plane of spirit, i.e. from a region transcending our phenomenal existence, what would nineteenth century intelligence a priori expect of the various divergent religious systems? That amid variations, some striking similarities would exist to indicate the identity of their original source. It would expect also to find some statement of facts in nature not otherwise known to man, some recognition of the stupendous movement of evolution—the elucidation of which in its physical aspect is the grand achievement of modern science—and some hint of the laws governing that movement. Further, it would expect to find guidance to right conduct and some indications of the paramount purpose and end of universal life.
Hitherto, as it happens, the investigating spirit of modern science has concerned itself little with theological matters; and the recognized exponents of our own racial theology are incompetent judges here. Their training has made of them religious specialists so interpenetrated by sectarian dogma that they are incapable of assuming the mental attitude of a genuine criticism claiming no superiority for Christianity over other great religions, save such value of position as lies in its later birth and development. Outside the churches, however, comparative theology is not neglected, and it is freely admitted now by many earnest students of the subject that all the great religions of the world possess spiritual, ethical and philosophical ideas in common.
Hinduism deals with startling facts of the invisible world. In the Vedas[[15]] it teaches that consciousness is the foundation or groundwork of all nature, that matter and force are instinct with conscious life. Behind these is the great unmanifested Deity—the “Unknowable” of our own Spencerian philosophy—the Illimitable, Eternal, Absolute, Unconditioned Source of the Universe, incognizable and inconceivable to the finite faculties of man. With manifestation there appears the threefold aspect of Deity—the supreme Logos of the Universe—a Unity in Trinity and a Trinity in Unity, the reflection of which as Consciousness, Substance, Force, runs throughout nature, and is also shown in the Christian and other creeds and the Pauline description of man’s triune constitution—body, soul and spirit. The doctrine of evolution is taught in Hinduism on far wider lines than the modern intellectual conception lays down. The latter, dealing with outward appearance, bases itself on physical phenomena. The former transcends phenomenal existence and human experience. It embraces the superlatively great, the infinitely small and complex, and presents a cosmogony evolutional throughout, while it points to a spiritual development for the individual so extensive and sublime that the Western mind, unused to metaphysical thought, is unable to grasp and clothe it in words. In this philosophy there is no stultifying of human endeavour by the view of the soul’s opportunities as confined to three score years and ten. That span of life makes but a single page in the soul’s vast evolutional history, for at the centre of Hinduism lies a rock-bed of belief in re-incarnation—that process of nature which accomplishes the gradual growth and spiritual elevation of humanity by means of the individual soul’s successive returns to physical life, with intervening periods of spiritual rest or latency. The threefold nature of man gives him touch with three levels of existence, and Hindu religion represents him bound to a wheel unceasingly turning in three worlds, viz. a world of waking consciousness or the physical body, and of two other worlds to which he passes successively at and after death, and in which he works out his latest earthly experience and assimilates all its fruit, then returns through the gateway of birth to begin a fresh course of discipline and learning.
[15]. It is from the study of the Vedas that the educated Hindu seeks to derive his creed. I refer my reader to Mr. J. E. Slater’s Higher Hinduism in relation to Christianity.
Turning from the transcendental to the scientific and practical sides of Hinduism, we find an external worship and broad polity calculated to regulate human conduct in every relation of life, religious, national, social, family and personal—the entire system founded on the law of causation on all planes of being. By our own scientists, that law is recognized on the physical plane as the invariable sequence of cause and effect. Hinduism regards it as working also on higher planes, and terms it the law of action or Karma—the moral retribution which brings out inexorably in one life the results following from causes arising in previous lives. Responsibility therefore rests with every self-conscious, reflective being, and divine justice is shown reconcilable with the free-will of man through the union of Karma and re-incarnation. “God is not mocked; whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap.”
The religion of the Parsis, i.e. the modern form of Zoroastrianism, has equally with Hinduism a metaphysical philosophy, and an outward worship, while mingled with all there is an astronomical teaching based on the same conception of nature as is found in Hinduism, viz. that it is the manifestation, in infinitely varied forms, of the one universal consciousness or mind. The constitution of humanity is two-fold. Spirit and matter are two distinct and different principles, both are in man; and he is capable of siding definitely with either. The ethic of Zoroastrian faith is based on the belief that he will throw himself on the side of the pure, that he will battle for it and maintain it. To be at all times actively on the side of purity is a clear personal duty. The devout Zoroastrian must keep the earth pure and till it religiously. He must perform the functions of agriculture as a service to the gods, for the earth is the pure creature of Ahura Mazdao—the Supreme Spirit to be guarded from all pollution. And passing from the outer to the inner life of the individual, the constantly-repeated maxim is this: I withdraw from all sins by pure thoughts, pure deeds, pure words.