" RELIGIO LAICI."
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—Your correspondent in the Spectator of November 10th says : " A man may feel grave doubts about creeds and dogmas, and yet may lead a straight and honourable life, because his conduct is based on ideas and thoughts which cannot be rigidly defined or adequately expressed in words, and yet to him are powerful motives." For " because" it is ob- vious that one should read "in spite of," since it would be absurd to suppose that inadequacy of verbal expression could be the cause of a straight and honourable life. No doubt the statement, so corrected, is quite true ; but what has it to do with religion? Nothing is leading educated men further astray nowadays than the habit of speaking of morality and humanitarianism by the name of religion. Religion means a standard of con- duct that has an objective and a supernatural basis. Johnson, for instance, defines it to be " virtue, as founded on reverence of God, and expectation of future rewards and punishments." Bailey (1747) says it is " the worship of a Deity." Ogilvie (1884) calls it " the feeling of reverence entertained towards a Supreme Being possessing superhuman control over the destinies of man." And the late Dr. Max Muller speaks of it as " that faculty which, in spite of sense and reason, enables man to apprehend the Infinite under various disguises." Though the term " disguises " is objection- able, yet his general meaning is fair enough. In short, " religion " connotes two qualities in authority; the authority must come from outside, and it must be supernatural. But what the educated "man in the street" calls religion is neither objective nor supernatural. It rests upon his own private judgment, and upon his own understanding. It is not
necessary, nor even possible, that ethics should rest on a basis of dogma ; and modern " religion "is exclisively ethical. But it is necessary that religion, properly so called, should rest upon dogma. And those who have grave doubts about creeds and dogmas, who lead straight and honourable lives, and whose conduct is based on ideas and thoughts that cannot be rigidly defined or adequately expressed in words, may be as highly moral and as sensitively humanitarian as Seneca or Epictetus, but " religion " is a word the meaning of which has not yet dawned upon them. And for this masquerading of morality and human sentiment in the garb of religion the " comprehensiveness " of the Anglican Establishment has
much to answer.—I am, Sir, &c., W. D. GAINSFORD. Skendleby Hall, Spilsby.
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