VII
Is the Substance of Religion a Phantom, or an Eternal Reality?
We are now prepared to see what is involved in the Reality of Religion. Speaking historically, it may be said that Religion has always had two sides: on the one side it has consisted of a theory, more or less elaborate, and on the other side it has consisted of a group of sentiments conformable to the theory. Now in all ages and in every form of Religion, the theory has comprised three essential elements: first, belief in Deity, as quasi-human; secondly, belief in an Unseen World in which human beings continue to exist after death; thirdly, recognition of the ethical aspects of human life as related in a special and intimate sense to this Unseen World. These three elements are alike indispensable. If any one of the three be taken away, the remnant cannot properly be called Religion. Is then the subject-matter of Religion something real and substantial, or is it a mere figment of the imagination? Has Religion through all these weary centuries been dealing with an eternal verity, or has it been blindly groping after a phantom? Can that history of the universe which we call the Doctrine of Evolution be made to furnish any lesson that will prove helpful in answering this question? We shall find, I think, that it does furnish such a lesson.
But first let us remember that along with the three indispensable elements here specified, every historic Religion has also contained a quantity of cosmological speculations, metaphysical doctrines, priestly rites and ceremonies and injunctions, and a very considerable part of this structure has been demolished by modern criticism. The destruction of beliefs has been so great that we can hardly think it strange if some critics have taken it into their heads that nothing can be rescued. But let us see what the doctrine of evolution has to say. Our inquiry may seem to take us very far afield, but that we need not mind if we find the answer by and by directing us homeward.
VIII
The Fundamental Aspect of Life
