An analysis of religious belief

by viscount John Russell Amberley

A ship that has been driven from her intended course is drifting, with a crew who have no clear knowledge of her whereabouts, upon an unexplored ocean. Suddenly her captain exclaims that he sees land in the distance. The mate, however, summoned to verify the captain's observation, fancies that the black speck on the horizon is not land, but a large vessel. The sailors and passengers take part, some with the one, some with the other; while many of them form opinions of their own not agreeing with that of either, one maintaining it to be a whale, another a dark cloud, a third something else, and so forth. Minor differences abound. Those who take it to be land are at issue as to its being a plain or a mountain, those who think it a vessel cannot agree as to the description of the craft. One solitary passenger sees nothing at all. Instead of drawing what would appear to be the most obvious conclusion, that he is either more shortsighted or less apt to discover distant objects than the rest, he infers that his vision alone is right, and that of all the others, captain, passengers, and crew, defective and misleading. Oblivious of the fact that the mere failure to perceive an object is no proof of its non-existence, he persists in asserting not only that the speck seen in the distance, being so variously described, probably does not resemble any of the ideas formed of it on board the ship, but that there is no speck at all. Even the fact that the crews of many other ships, passing in this direction, perceive the same dim outline on the horizon, does not shake his conviction that it is a mere "idol of the tribe." Such is the procedure of those who deny the reality of the object of the religious idea. Instead of drawing from the diversity of creeds the legitimate inference that the Being of whom they severally speak is of unknown nature, they conclude, from the mere absence of the idea of that Being in their individual consciousness, that its very existence is a dream.

Lastly, a few words, and a few only, must be said in reply to those who will think that the cenception of the Unknowable resulting from our analysis is too vague and shadowy to form the fitting foundation for religious feeling. They will probably object that the Being whom that feeling requires is not an inconceivable Cause or Substance of the Universe, but a Personal God; not an undefined something which we can barely imagine, but a definite Some one whom we can adore and love. There is nothing, they will say, in such a conception as this either to satisfy the affections or to impress the moral sentiments. And both purposes were fulfilled by the Christian ideal of a loving Father and a righteous Judge.

To these objections I would reply, first of all, that I have simply attempted to analyze religion as I found it, neither omitting what was of the essence of the religious idea, nor inserting what was not. If this analysis is in any respect defective, that is a matter for criticism and discussion. But if it has been correctly performed—of which I frankly admit there is abundant room for doubt—then I am not responsible for not finding in the universal elements of religion that which is not contained within them. The expression found for the ultimate truths must embrace within it, if possible, the crude notions of deity formed by the savage, and the highly abstract ideal formed by the most eminent thinkers of modern times. Even then, if I myself held the doctrines of the personality and the fatherhood of God, I could not have required from others any admission of these views of mine as universal ingredients in religious faith. The utmost I could have done would have been to tack them on as supplementary developments of the idea of the ultimate Being. And thus it is still open to any one who wishes it to do. Difficult as it is to reconcile the ideas of Love and Justice with unlimited Power and absolute Existence, yet if there are some who find it possible to accomplish the reconciliation, it may be well for them so to do.[104] Undoubtedly, however, all such efforts do appear to me mere hankerings after an incarnation of that idea which, by its very nature, does not admit of representation by incarnate forms, even though those forms be moral perfections. And I would reply, secondly, to the above objection, that, while we lose something by giving up the definite personality of God, we gain something also. If we part with the image of a loving Father, we part also with that of a stern monarch and an implacable judge. If we can no longer indulge in the contemplation of perfect virtue, embodied in an actual Person, we are free from the problem that has perplexed theologians of every age: how to reconcile the undoubted evil in the world with the omnipotence of that Person. I know that there are some who think it possible to retain the gentler features in the popular conception of deity, while dropping all that is harsh and repulsive. To them the idea of God is as free from terror as the idea of the Unknowable, and the first of these gains is therefore no gain to them. But the problem of the existence of evil presses perhaps with greater severity upon them than upon any other class of theologians. To suppose that God could not prevent the presence of wickedness, or could not prevent it without some greater calamity, is to deny his omnipotence; to suppose that he could, and did not, is to question his benevolence. But even admitting the improvement made by purging from the character of God all its severity, its vindictiveness, and its tendency to excessive punishment, the fact remains that the conception thus attained is not that of the popular creed at all, but that of a few enlightened thinkers. And it is with the former, not with the latter, that the doctrine of the Unknowable must be compared, in order fairly to estimate its advantages or disadvantages in relation to the current belief in a personal God.

Moreover, it must be borne in mind that the dim figure we have shadowed out of an inconceivable and all-embracing ultimate Existence, if widely different from the more ordinary theological embodiments of the religious idea, is altogether in harmony with many of its expressions by the most devoutly religious minds. If religion has always had a tendency to run to seed in dogma, it has also always had a tendency to revert to its fundamental mysticism. The very best and highest minds have continually evinced this tendency to mysticism, and it has mixed itself up with the logical definitions of others who did not rise to so exalted a level. So that the examination of the writings of religious men will continually disclose that profound impression of the utterly incomprehensible and mysterious nature of the Supreme Being which is now, in its complete development in the form of Agnosticism, stigmatized as incompatible with genuine religious faith.

That tendency to be deeply sensible of the impossibility of conceiving the Absolute which Religion has thus evinced, it is the result of Science to strengthen and to increase. Science shows the imperfection of all the concrete expressions which have been found for the Unknowable. It proves that we cannot think of the Unknowable as entering in any peculiar sense into special objects in nature, dwelling in special places, or speaking through special channels. Miraculous phenomena, which were supposed to constitute the peculiar sphere of its manifestations, are thrown by Science completely out of the account. But all phenomena whatsoever are shown to manifest the Unknowable. Thus, while scientific inquiry tends to diminish the intensity of religious ideas, it tends to widen their extension. They do not any longer cling to partial symbols. They do not attach themselves with the same fervor to individual embodiments. But, in becoming more abstract, they become also more pervading. Religion is found everywhere and in everything. All nature is the utterance of the idea. And, as it gains in extension while losing in intensity in reference to the external world, it goes through a similar process in relation to human life. No longer a force seizing on given moments of our existence, at one moment inspiring devotional observances, at the next forgotten in the pleasures or the business of the day; at one time filling men with the zeal of martyrs or crusaders, at another leaving them to the unrestrained indulgence of gross injustice or revolting cruelty, it becomes a calm, all-pervading sentiment, shown (if it be shown at all) in the general beauty and spirituality of the character, not in the stated exercises of a rigorous piety, or in the passionate outbursts of an enthusiastic fervor.

But these considerations would lead me on to a subject which I had once hoped to treat within the boundaries of the present volume, but which I am now compelled, owing to the enlargement of the scheme, to postpone to a future time. That subject is the relation of religion to ethics. It may have struck some readers as an omission that I have said nothing of religion as a force inspiring moral conduct, which is the principal aspect under which it is regarded by some competent authorities. But the omission has been altogether intentional. It would take me a long time to explain what in my judgment has been the actual influence of religion upon morals in the past, and what is likely to be its influence in the future. Meanwhile I merely note the fact that this analysis professes to be complete in its own kind; that I have endeavored to probe the religious sentiment to the bottom, and to discover all that it contains. Thus, if religion be not only an emotion, but a moral force, it must acquire this character in virtue of the relation of its emotional elements to human character, not in virtue of the presence of ethical elements actually belonging to the religious emotion, and comprehended under it by the same indefeasible title as the sense of the Unknowable itself.

At present, however, I can attempt no answer to the objection which will no doubt be urged, that so abstract and cold a faith as that expounded here can afford no satisfaction to the moral sentiments. Indeed I must to a certain extent admit the reality of the loss which the adoption of this faith entails. There is consolation no doubt in the thought of a Heavenly Father who loves us; there is strength in the idea that he sees and helps us in our continual combat against evil without and evil within; there is happiness in the hope that he will assign us in another life an infinite reward for all the endurances of this. Above all, there is comfort in the reflection that when we are parted by death we are not parted for ever; that our love for those whom we have cherished on earth is no temporary bond, to be broken ere long in bitterness and despair, but a possession never to be lost again, a union of souls interrupted for a little while by the separation of the body, only to be again renewed in far greater perfection and carried on into far higher joys than can be even imagined here. All this is beautiful and full of fascination: why should we deny it? Candor compels us to admit that in giving it up with the other illusions of our younger days we are resigning a balm for the wounded spirit for which it would be hard to find an equivalent in all the repertories in Science, and in all the treasures of philosophy. Yet it must be borne in mind that every step from a lower to a higher creed involves a precisely similar loss. How much more beautiful was nature (as Schiller has shown us in his poem on the gods of Greece) when every fountain, tree and river had its presiding genius, when the Sun was driven by a divine charioteer, when the deities of Olympus intervened in the affairs of men to prevent injustice and to maintain the right. How cold and lifeless, nay, how profoundly irreligious, would our modern conception of the earth and the solar system have appeared to the worshiper of Poseidon and Apollon. And if the loss of the Christian as compared to the Pagan is thus great, how great also is the loss of the enlightened Protestant as compared to the ignorant Catholic peasant. What comfort must be found in the immediate intervention of the Virgin in answer to prayer, what security afforded by the protection of the local saint. Or again, how great the pleasure of contributing by our piety to the release of a friend from purgatorial torment, and of knowing that our friends will do us the same kindly service.

Even without contrasting such broad and conspicuous divisions of Christianity as these, we shall find enough of the same kind of difference within the limits of Protestantism itself. What mere intellectual conviction of a future state can vie with the consoling certainty offered by the Spiritualistic belief, that those whom we have lost on earth still hover around us in our daily course; sometimes even appear to us in bodily form, and converse with us in human speech. No mere hope of meeting them again can for a moment equal the delight of seeing their well-known shapes and hearing their familiar tones. Hence the Spiritualist has undoubtedly a source of comfort in his faith which more rational creeds can offer nothing to supply. But who that does not share it can envy them so baseless a conviction, so illusory a joy?

It is, in fact, the very condition of progress that, as we advance in knowledge and in culture, we give up something on the road. But it is also a condition that we do not feel the need of that which we have lost. Not only as we become men do we put away childish things, but we can no longer realize in thought the enjoyment which those childish things brought with them. Other interests, new occupations, deeper affections take the place of the interests, the occupations, and the affections of our early years. So too should it be in religion. Men have dwelt upon the love of God because they could not satisfy the craving of nature for the love of their fellow men. They have looked forward to eternal happiness in a future life because they could not find temporary happiness in this. It is these reflections which point out the way in which the void left by the removal of the religious affections should hereafter be supplied. The effort of those who cannot turn for consolation to a friend in heaven should be to strengthen the bonds of friendship on earth, to widen the range of human sympathy and to increase its depth. We should seek that love in one another which we have hitherto been required to seek in God. Above all, we should sweep away those barriers of convention and fancied propriety which continually hinder the free expression of affection, and force us to turn from the restrictions of the world to One towards whom there need be no irksome conformity to artificial regulation, and in speaking to whom we are under no shadow of reserve.

Were we thus permitted to find in our fellow creatures that sympathy which so many mourners, so many sufferers, so many lonely hearts, have been compelled to find only in the idea of their heavenly Father, I hesitate not to say that the consolations of the new religion would far surpass in their strength and their perfection all those that were offered by the old. Towards such increasing and such deepening of the sympathies of humanity I believe that we are continually tending even now. Meantime, while we are still far from the promised land, the adherents of the universal religion are not without a happiness of their own. Their faith is at least a faith of perfect peace. Untroubled by the storms of controversy, in which so many others are tossed about, they can welcome all men as brothers in faith, for all of them, even the most hostile, contribute to supply the stones of the broad foundation upon which their philosophy is built. Those therefore who contend against them, be it even with vehemence and passion, yield, them involuntary help in bringing the materials upon which their judgment is formed. No man can truly oppose their religion, for he who seems to be hostile to it is himself but one of the notes struck by the Unknowable Cause, which so plays upon the vast instrument of humanity as to bring harmony out of jangling sounds, and to produce the universal chords of truth from the individual discords of error. Scientific discoveries and philosophic inquiries, so fatal to other creeds, touch not the universal religion. They who accept it can but desire the increase of knowledge, for even though new facts and deeper reasoning should overthrow something of what they have hitherto believed and taught, they will rejoice that their mistakes should be corrected, and their imperfections brought to light. They desire but the Truth, and the Truth has made them free. And as in their thoughts they can wish nothing so much as to know and to believe that which is true, so in their lives they will express the serenity which that desire will inevitably bring. They are not pained or troubled because other men see not as they see. They have no vain hope of a unity of thought which the very conditions of our being do not permit. They aim not at conquering the minds of men; far rather would they stimulate and help them to discover a higher Truth than they themselves have been permitted to know. And as their action will thus be inspired with hope of contributing their mite to the treasury of human knowledge, well-being, and moral good, so their death will be the expression of that, peaceful faith which has sustained their lives. Even though torn away when, in their own judgment, they have still much to do, they will not repine at the necessity of leaving it undone, even though they are well aware that their names, which might have been illustrious in the annals of our race, will now be buried in oblivion. For the disappearance of a single life is but a ripple on the ocean of humanity, and humanity feels it not. Hence they will meet their end "sustained and soothed by an unfaltering trust,"