The Christian Faith Under Modern Searchlights

by William Hallock Johnson

In assuming a close connection between human and divine love, the mystics and the materialists join hands. With both the sexual is transmuted into the spiritual. Plato made the transition in his "Phædrus," comparing divine with human love and even with the latter in a degraded form. The sexual passion and the passion for purity both alike stir human nature to its depths, and the love of God and the love of woman are somehow akin. Religion in all ages has made free use of the imagery of love and marriage. The close connection has been emphasized by the statistics which show that the period between twelve and twenty years is preëminently the age of conversion.

On the other hand, the relations between the sexual and the religious life are so various that it does not seem possible to place them in the simple relation of cause and effect. In ancient religions there were examples of phallic worship and the mutilation of priests, of temple prostitutes and vestal virgins. Polygamy and celibacy have both alike been enjoined in the name of religion. The imagery of the bride and the bridegroom has been freely used by the mystics, but it is employed as well by those who are thought to oppose religion.[122] It is true that in Christian circles the curve of conversion rises suddenly and is at its height during the adolescent period; but again the facts are not so clear as to warrant the inference that conversion is an effect of the development of the sexual life. The adolescent period is the time also of the awakening of the intellectual and æsthetic faculties, of the feeling of responsibility and the stirring of ambition. Unless all of these are irradiations of the sexual impulse, it cannot be said that the religious awakening, coming within this period, must be so regarded. The adolescent period is one of peculiar religious susceptibility, but in part this may be due to the influence of social pressure, brought to bear very strongly at this period by parents and teachers. Again, the exceptions on both sides are too many. Adolescents, even those under religious influences, are not always converted; indeed this period is one of peculiar susceptibility to doubt. It is notorious that this is the time when the Sunday-school and the church are apt to lose their hold on the boys, and the questionnaires show juvenile atheism as well as juvenile piety. Sex development cannot well be the cause both of religion and irreligion.

While conversions are most frequent in the adolescent period, they occur both before and after it, as the statistics show. The notable conversions which have been most far-reaching in their effects, such as those of Paul, Augustine, and Luther, have occurred after adolescence. Conversion with Augustine meant the repression of sex desires and a celibate life, while in the case of Luther it meant freedom to marry. James observes that "the effects are infinitely wider than the alleged causes, and for the most part opposite in nature."[123] Paul's conversion and that of multitudes after him have no suggestion of a sexual element, and it is notable that men are apt to become increasingly occupied with religion in advancing age as the sexual impulse wanes.

The adolescent theory of conversion has, indeed, a lesson for Christian parents and teachers. They should urge upon boys and girls decision and public identification with the church during this period; but it would be a loss to religion if religious teachers should forget the profound psychology of the motto: "Give me a child for his first seven years, and you can have him for the rest of his life." As Stevens says: "We cannot wait till adolescence is reached before we win the soul for God. That would be fatally late. The boy must know that the highest is the highest when he sees it, and must have been prepared to love it."[124] The profound emotional disturbance of puberty is not regeneration in the Christian sense, while at that time the conditions for it may be peculiarly favourable.

2. Midway between those explanations of religion which refer it to a physical and to a supernatural cause is the psychological theory advocated by James, that the special seat or source of the religious life is in the Subconscious. While the "subliminal" and the "subconscious" are newcomers in psychology, they have already played a considerable rôle in religious discussion, and have been used in illustration and even in reconstruction of theological doctrine. Multiple personality illustrates the Trinity; the subconscious is made, as in Sanday's "Christologies Ancient and Modern," the sphere of the divine nature of Christ; and psychical research is looked to by some as a hopeful reinforcement or scientific demonstration of the doctrine of a future life.

The subconscious is used in a rather loose way by popular and even by scientific writers. James regards it as "nowadays a well-accredited psychological entity,"[125] while Pratt refers to the use that is made of it as "rather questionable psychology."[126] Some of its possible and legitimate meanings are: (a) Those hereditary dispositions which, unknown to the man himself, largely shape his actions; or (b) the psychophysical machinery of habitualized action. As Jastrow says: "We rise upon steps of our habitualized selves, grown familiar to their task."[127] The subconscious again (c) may mean that subliminal activity of the mind which, when the conscious strain of effort and attention has been unsuccessful, often, as it seems, does the work for one, recalling the forgotten name, solving the problem, or even creating a new product such as a finished song or poem.

Lastly (d) the subconscious may refer to that more occult sphere to which belong the phenomena of hypnotism, automatism, multiple personality, and perhaps telepathy, in virtue of which the subject performs actions or has ideas to which his ordinary consciousness gives no clew. The subconscious in any or all of these senses is at least the dwelling place of mystery. Starbuck admits that "what happens below the threshold of consciousness must, in the nature of the case, evade analysis."[128] It is a mysterious region of shadows, a twilight zone in which the divine and human may meet. It may be in itself the source of the religious life, or at least the channel through which revelation and redemptive influence may come.

In James' exposition the subconscious part of a man is the higher part; and man is conscious that this higher part of himself "is co-terminous and continuous with a more of the same quality, which is operative in the universe outside of him."[129] What is this more? Our point of contact with it is the subconscious self; and without asking for the farther limits of the "More," and "disregarding the over-beliefs," "we have in the fact that the conscious person is continuous with a wider self through which saving experiences come, a positive content of religious experience, which, it seems to me, is literally and objectively true as far as it goes."[130]