Instead of trying to give direct answers, the best way to clear the matter will be to begin with the extreme of a one-sided view: and, first, there is an opinion which may be said simply to identify religion with orthodoxy, with the holding for true what is true. No doubt right doctrine is a very important matter, but does that make it religion? Put it to the religious consciousness, and the answer is, No. It is the belief ‘with the heart’ that is wanted; and where that is not, religion is not. Else even the very devils would be religious; for they, as we are told, go further even than is required of them, and add to orthodoxy the fear of God.
So, in morality, a man must know what is right; but no one is moral simply because he has that knowledge. In both cases you can not do, without knowing what you are to do; but mere knowing, apart from doing, is neither religion nor morality.
The next modification of this one-sided opinion is the view, which is all too popular, and says, ‘No doubt it is true that to know is not enough; action ought to follow; but, for all that, it is religion when I say my prayers, or meditate, or go to church, and that whether it goes any further, and whether anything comes of it, or not.’
By denying such a doctrine we ought not to give offence to Christians. Whether we shall give offence or not is another matter. We are sorry if it is so; but nevertheless we deny the assertion, and we think that on our side we have the religious consciousness[1] and the New Testament. There we do not have the love of God and man put side by side, as things which exist or can exist apart, but, where the latter fails, there fails also the former, and with it, I suppose, religion. There we are told that ‘pure religion’ means duty to the afflicted, and the ‘world,’ by which we are not to be spotted, is hardly all spheres outside our devotions, not every region where the authority of the clergyman ceases.
We maintain that neither church-going, meditation, nor prayer, except so far as it reacts on practice and subserves that, is religious at all. Æsthetic or speculative contemplation it may be; it may be a production of the feeling which results from the satisfied religious will; but religious it is not, except so far as it means will
