The war, which has left no field of human interest untouched, has
raised many questions about religion that must be dealt with in new
ways--about its validity, its power, its future. The impression the
whole experience of the war seems to convey is that religion has
failed to be either a great creative force or a great restraining
power, although to express this as a failure of religion may imply
more than we have a right to expect of it. Religion did not cause the
war, but it certainly did not prevent it. It had no power to make
peace. Yet we see that now religion is needed more than ever, and that
if the social life be not deeply infused with the religious spirit,
and if we do not live as a world more in the religious spirit,
something fundamental and necessary will be wanting which may be the
most essential factor of progress and civilization. The war leaves us
with the feeling, perhaps, that until now the world has had far too
many religions and too little religion. There has been too much of
creed and too little of deep and sustaining religious moods. Perhaps,
as Russell says, we are to be convinced that religion has been too
professional; there has been too much paid service, and too little
voluntary service.
Such conclusions of course have in them all the reservation that
personal reactions must have, but it is easy to believe that in the
life of such a nation as our own, and indeed in the world, no
practical unity will ever be permanently reached unless there be a
firm basis in a common religious foundation. This we might say is made
probable by the truth that religion is the most fundamental thing in
life, and if there be no unity and common understanding in that
sphere, there can be none in reality anywhere in life.
Differences in
creed mean little, except in so far as they conceal basic agreement
and make artificial barriers; differences in the way of understanding
and valuing the world mean everything. We want a common religious
faith--common in the possession at least of the moods which make a
harmonious social life possible, and of the spirit in which the
world's work can, we may believe, alone be done.
Upon such grounds one might maintain that a very important part of the
work of education everywhere is to teach now more _natural religion_,
or rather perhaps _that the school must be everywhere conducted to a
greater extent in the spirit of religion_. Then we might hope to see
religion becoming actually a power in the social life, helping to
transform the crude forces and purposes of the day into higher ones.
With such a religious basis we might begin to see the working of God
in history and in the world as a whole, and we should feel in the
history of the world and in the world that is before us the presence
of reality. Then we should have a common ground for the sympathy and
understanding without which not even the most practical affairs can be
conducted efficiently. That ideal in education, often expressed by the
educator, which holds that the purpose of all teaching is to convey
the meaning of the world to the child, to make the world live in
epitome, so to speak, in the soul of every child, is religious and
nothing else, and quite satisfies the demands of our present day.
If such a standpoint be the right one, certainly the ambition of any
nation (or indeed of any group) to have a religion peculiar to itself
and an outgrowth of its own culture is unfortunate, and indeed comes
from the very essence of morbid nationalism. In such desires there is
thinly veiled the hope that through religion the old claim of nations
to the right to temporal supremacy may be vindicated.
Lagarde, in
about 1874, was probably the first to say that Germany must have a
national religion, but during the war this hope has been expressed
again and again--Germany must have a new religion, befitting a great
independent people, and must no longer be dependent for its religion
upon an old and inferior race. Whether this longing for a new religion
has not been in reality a longing to be upheld again by the old pagan
faith, which was a fitting cult for the nationalistic temper, with its
ideal of force, may justly be asked. It is interesting to remember
that in Japan also, in recent times, there has been a demand for a
national religion that should unite all the creeds in one. That this
idea of a national religion, as contrasted with an universal religion,
is opposed to the spirit of Christianity is plain, and the claim that
Germany has not been able to understand the key-note of Christianity,
as it is revealed in humanity and justice, may therefore be said to
have some foundation in truth.
Can we say that the work of education, in the religious life, is that
of inculcating and extending Christianity? It might indeed so be
interpreted, and with a liberal enough understanding of Christianity
we should say that this is true. But after all, it is Christianity as
the vehicle of certain fundamental religious moods and ideals that,
from an educational point of view at least, is of the greatest
concern. It is the optimistic mood, the ideal of justice and humanity,
the recognition of the worth of the soul of the individual, the ideal
of service--it is these qualities of Christianity rather than its
specific doctrines that we must now emphasize in our wider social
life, and such religion is natural religion, or philosophy or
Christianity as we may choose to call it. Any experience, indeed, that
fosters such moods and ideals has a place in religious education. Who
can doubt that such religion must henceforth have a large place in the
world? It will be the test in the end of the possibility of sincere
internationalism. Unless we can have common religious moods we can
have no universal morality that is founded upon secure feeling and
principles, and unless we can include the whole world in our religion,
we shall certainly not be able to include it in any sincere way in our
politics.
No religion, finally, will be profound enough and have great enough
power to be thus a support of a future world-consciousness unless it
be a religion of feeling rather than primarily of ideas-
-_a religion
in fact capable of inspiring ecstatic moods_. And this ecstasy of
feeling can never in our modern world be a prevailing quality of the
religious life unless religion be something that extends over all life
and draws its power from all the energies and capacities of the
psychic life. The religion of our new era, we may be sure, if it be in
any real sense a religion of the world, will not be something apart
from and above other experiences. It will be a secular religion and a
democratic religion, a quality and spirit of life as a whole.
Experience referred to what we believe is real and universal, and
subjected sincerely to all the capacities and criteria of appreciation
that we possess is religious experience. Religion, educationally
considered, is a means of giving to life a sense of reality and of
value. That spirit should pervade and inspire all we do in the work of
education.