2. Thus much in regard to the metaphysical element of religion: next comes the moral element. God does not only appear to the human soul as a being infinite, inexhaustible, eternal. The soul wants him nearer, and in her respectful boldness she calls him Father. Man is not only feeble and imperfect; he is also a sinner and a sufferer; evil is his condition. The frailty of our being and its narrow limits are already an evil; but these are the least of evils; humanity suffers, furthermore, from a double evil far more real and poignant: pain and sin. Against physical pain, suffering, it has but the feeble resource of prudence; against moral evil it has but one means of defense, very weak also—free-will. It would seem that we are the masters of the universe; but experience shows, on the contrary, that we are the feeblest among its creatures; often does the will succumb; and Kant himself, despite his stoicism, asks whether indeed a single act of virtue has ever been accomplished in the world. Life, on the whole, notwithstanding its grand aspects and its few exquisite and sublime joys, life is bad; all ends badly, and death, which puts an end to all evils, is yet the greatest of evils. “The human soul,” says Plato, “like a bird, raises its eyes to heaven,” and calls for a remedy, a help, a deliverance. “Deliver us from evil,” is the cry of every religion. God is the liberator and comforter. We love what is good and we do what is evil; we impatiently desire happiness, and meet with nothing but wretchedness. Such is the contradiction Pascal points out with such incisive eloquence. This contradiction must be removed. Hope and trust in a supreme and benevolent Being must ransom us from pain and sin.
Many persons place the essence of religion in the belief in a future life, or immortality of the soul. Who, without the hope of gaining paradise, would think of God? But this is a contradiction in terms. Paradise, for the true believer, is nothing; God, everything. If a future life is a necessary consequence of the divine justice and bounty, we need not doubt its existence; if not, we have nothing to ask; it does not concern us. What especially concerns us is to know what we ought to do here below, and to have the strength to do it with. “Life is a meditation, not of death, but of life,” said Spinoza. But in order to live, and live well, one must believe in life, must believe in its healthy and holy significance, believe that it is not mere play, a mere mystification, but that it was given us by the principle of good for the success of good.
The essence of religion, then, is a belief in the goodness of God. A German critic, Feuerbach, said with great effect, that religion consisted in divinizing human attributes. Thus: God is good, means according to him: goodness is divine. God is just, signifies: justice is divine. The boldness of Christianity, its profound, pathetic beauty, its great moral efficacy lie in the fact that it has divinized our miseries; and that, instead of saying, pain is divine, death is divine, it has said: God has suffered, God has died. In a word, according to the same author, God “is the human heart divinized.” Nothing could be more true and beautiful, only in another sense than that in which the author takes it. If God himself was not supreme goodness, the heart of man would then contain something divine, and God would not himself be divine! The heart feels that it exceeds all things, but, in order to believe in itself, it must know itself coming from a higher and purer source than it is itself.
“In thinking of such a being (God), man experiences a sentiment which is above all a religious sentiment. Every man, as we come into contact with him, awakens in us a feeling of some kind, according to the qualities we perceive in him, and should not He who possesses all perfections excite in us the strongest of feelings? If we think of the infinite essence of God, if we are thoroughly impressed by his omnipotence, if we remember that the moral law expresses his will, and that he has attached to the fulfillment and violation of this law, rewards and punishments which he distributes with inflexible justice, we must of necessity experience before such greatness emotions of respect and fear. If next we come to consider that this omnipotent being was pleased to create us, we, whom he had no need of, and that in creating us he heaped upon us benefits of all kinds, that he has given us this universe to enjoy its ever renewed beauties, that he has given us society that our life may become enlarged in that of our fellow-beings, that he has given us reason to think, a heart to love, liberty to act, that same respect and fear will receive additional strength from a still gentler sentiment, namely, that of love. Love, when directed toward feeble and circumscribed beings, inspires us with the desire to do them good: but, in itself, love does not especially consider the advantage of the person beloved: we love a thing, good or beautiful, simply because it is good or beautiful, and without thought of benefiting it; or benefiting ourselves. How much more so when this love is turned to God, as a pure homage to his perfections; when it is the natural outpouring of the soul toward a being infinitely adorable.
“Adoration consists in respect and love. If man, however, sees in God the omnipotent master of heaven and earth only, the source of all justice and the avenger of all wrong, he will, in his weakness, be crushed by the overwhelming weight of God’s greatness: he will be living a life of perpetual fear, from the uncertainty of the judgment of God; he will conceive for this world and life, always so full of misery, nothing but hatred. Read Pascal’s Thoughts. Pascal, in his superb humility, forgets two things: the dignity of man and the goodness of God. If, on the other hand, man only sees in God a kind and indulgent Father, he will run into a chimerical mysticism. In substituting love for fear, there is danger of losing the awe which we should have for him. God is then no longer a master, scarcely a father even; for the idea of father carries with it, in a certain degree, that of a respectful fear: he is nothing more than a friend. True adoration does not sever love from respect: it is respect animated by love.
“Adoration is a universal sentiment; it differs in degrees according to the differences in human nature; it takes the greatest variety of forms; it often does not even know itself; sometimes it betrays itself by a sudden exclamation, a cry from the heart over the grand scenes of nature and life; sometimes it rises silently in the deeply-moved and dumb-stricken soul; it may in its expression mistake its aim; but fundamentally it is always the same. It is a spontaneous and irresistible yearning of the soul, which reason must declare just and legitimate. What more just, in fact, than to fear the judgments of Him who is holiness itself, who knows our actions and our intentions, and who will judge them as it becomes supreme justice? What more just, also, than to love perfect goodness and the source of all love? Adoration is first a natural sentiment: reason makes of it a duty.”[141]
These two sentiments, love and respect, may, inasmuch as they relate to God—that is to say, to an infinite being—be resolved into one, which we call veneration. Veneration is the respect mixed with love which we feel for our aged parents, for some exalted virtue, for devotion to a suffering country; but it is only through extension we so understand it: its true object, its proper domain, is the divinity;[142] and if there are other objects to be revered and venerated, it is because we detect in them something august and sacred.
It will, perhaps, be said that sentiments cannot be erected into duties: for how can I force myself to feel what I do not feel? Acts can be commanded, but not sentiments.
This is true; but the acts, in the first place, are nothing without the sentiments, and if piety is not already in the heart, the most pious works will have no virtue. Moreover, if it be true that it is impossible to generate, either in one’s self or in others, sentiments, the germs of which do not exist in human nature, it is not true that sentiments in conformity with this nature, and which, whilst we believe them completely absent, may only be dormant, could not be excited, awakened, cultivated, and developed. Now, it is enough to think of divine greatness, to experience a feeling of fear and respect; it is enough to think of divine perfection, to love this perfection, and seek to come nearer to it. Duty here consists, then, in thinking of God, in giving this great thought a part of our life, in uniting it with all the acts of that life: these sentiments will, then, be generated and will expand of themselves.
169. Piety united with all the acts of life: indirect duties toward God.—We have just said that the idea of God can be united with all the acts of life. Every action being the fulfillment of the will of Providence, can be both moral and religious. He who works, prays, says the proverb; a life which strives to preserve itself pure and virtuous, is a continuous prayer. In this sense, all our duties are indirect duties toward God.