James' theory of the subconscious as the organ of religion can appeal to many undoubted facts, but if it means, as the tendency of his exposition indicates, that the subconscious as the organ of religion has superior moral worth to the life of full consciousness, it may be insisted that the subliminal sphere is the source of evil as well as of good. The subconscious may be identified with the flesh as well as with the spirit. If the subconscious, to use Pauline language, is the medium of higher spiritual influences, it is also the seat of the "old Adam," of "sin that dwelleth in me." In this region is to be found the source alike of the unexpected heroisms and weaknesses of men, of Peter's courage before the Council and of his cowardice before the serving maid. Hereditary and habitualized dispositions and tendencies are like the submerged part of an iceberg, and the winds of conscious resolution and effort are often powerless against the sweep of the hidden current beneath.
It may be admitted that "if the grace of God miraculously operates, it probably operates through the subliminal door,"[131] but it should be remembered that in this region of the subliminal there are "dragons" as well as seraphim. Hypnotic influences may be therapeutic or they may be baleful, and in the region of the subconscious, it is hinted, insane delusions and psychopathic obsessions may find their source.[132] The subconscious is a battle-field rather than itself a source of help, and it cannot be said that the subconscious man of the shadows, if he exists in any of the rôles assigned to him, is any better or more religious than the man who has his being in the full sunlight of conscious activity. The psychological explanation of religion, like the pathological and the sexual, really proves too much. From all these alleged sources of religious life, not only saving influences but destructive influences flow. Royce's criticism is that "the new doctrine, viewed in one aspect, seems to leave religion in the comparatively trivial position of a play with whimsical powers—a prey to endless psychological caprices."[133]
3. Another theory of religion, now popular, seeks its explanation not in any bodily condition or stage of growth, nor in any special department of the mental life, but in the social relationships of men. Religion becomes a recognition of social values, "a consciousness of the highest social values,"[134] and is practically to be identified with patriotism, altruism and the vision of the future of society. "To-day," says Leuba, "most men and women derive whatever strength they may have to maintain their integrity and to devote themselves to the public good from their respect and love for their family, their friends, their business associates, and the state, and from their desire for the respect and love of men, much more than from any religious conviction. It is no longer the consciousness of God, but the consciousness of Man that is the power making for righteousness."[135] No metaphysical assumptions need be made by this view of religion except that of the existence of a world of one's fellow-men, a postulate which seems necessary even to a functional psychology.
However much in harmony with the spirit of the age, the social explanation of religion is one-sided and is inadequate to the depth and massiveness and infinite perspective of religious experience. Religion is a triangle with God, the self and one's brother at its three angles.
(a) The Social theory of religion gives no adequate recognition of the worth either of the individual or of society. The deepest message of religion is that the soul is worth something to God. Man, in spite of his social obligations, is not made simply for his brother. "We die alone," Pascal says, and there is a sense in which we live alone. As a writer on the psychology of the New Testament says: "The self, according to the New Testament, is not merely a social self developing in a community of other finite selves; it is a divine self realizing its ideal powers of service, and fulfilling its destiny only in a fellowship with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ."[136] Unless Humanity is endowed with the attributes of Deity, as it almost seems to be in the Positivist ritual, the estimate of society is also lowered when men are viewed as having relations and obligations only to one another. As James Ward has pointed out, Humanity can only have the significance and sacredness of the individuals from whom it is abstracted, and if these have no permanent or enduring worth, no more has Humanity.[137]
(b) The humanitarian view narrows too much the horizons of religion. It would exclude from religion the sense of infinite dependence, and of devotion to and communion with a personal higher Power. A religion of humanity merely will seem superficial to the mood which cries out, "My soul is athirst for God," or "I seek Thee in order that my soul may live." If the religion of the anchorite was one-sided, so equally is that of the humanitarian.[138] Neither sin nor righteousness can be interpreted in exclusively social terms, unless the conception of the community be so enlarged as to include the Great Companion and the Great Demander. The social theory, again, has no apparent place for the religion of solitude which finds God in nature. A New England writer says of Mount Ranier:
"I saw the mountain three years ago: Would that it might ever be my lot to see it again! I love to dream of its glory, and its vast whiteness is a moral force in my life." "Climb the mountains," says one of the best known of American mountaineers, John Muir, "and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while care will drop off like autumn leaves."[139]
(c) The religion of humanity must look outside itself for its highest inspiration for social service and for the norm of social progress. It was Christianity that created the atmosphere in which "the enthusiasm of humanity" and zeal for social service could flourish. Christianity has emphasized the value of the individual, and the sacredness of family relationships and the brother-hood of the children of the one Father. Without divine love as its pattern and inspiration human love would lose in comprehension and in intensity.
Society in its progress has ever waited for the signal to be given by some prophet from the deserts, or some seer who has brought from the mount of vision the pattern of a better social order. Those who see in social service the essence of religion are faced with the paradox that the wisest and most beneficent social influences have flowed from those experiences in which the individual turned his back on society and flaunted its ideals. A declaration of independence of society seems needed before there can be the most effective social service. By an unsocial act Abraham left his country and his kindred and his father's house, and yet in him all the families of the earth have been blessed; through Paul's unsocial act in deserting the traditions of his fathers, the course of Western civilization has been profoundly influenced; George Fox's unsocial act in depriving his town of the services of a useful tradesman, and making for himself a suit of leather, has been called by an acute observer, Carlyle, doubtless by an over-emphasis, the greatest event of modern history. Religion, in fact, first asserts itself as something over and above all social relations before its social mission can be performed.
4. The interpretation of religious experience by the psychologists has not always been favourable to theistic or Christian belief, but the failure of other explanations, if established, will lead us to seek a more adequate one by referring to a Reality transcending human experience and social relationships. The study of religious psychology has, in fact, furnished a broad basis from which a metaphysical or theistic inference can be drawn. Such an inference, cumulative in its effect, may be drawn from the universality of religious belief, from the imperativeness of social obligations implying a supersocial sanction, and from the regenerative effects of religion to an adequate cause. "God is real since He produces real effects."[140] But the study of religious experience has not only strengthened the older theistic arguments, but has in effect formulated two new arguments, the pragmatic and the mystical.