FROM RELIGION TO PHILOSOPHY.
IN our literary columns to-day we publish a communicated review of a very remarkable book entitled " From Religion to Philosophy : a Study in the Origins of Western Speculation," a book which the reviewer describes, and we feel no doubt with good cause, as " a great book " and " an epoch-making book." While fully admitting the scientific interest of Mr. Cornford's work, we desire to draw attention to one special point. Both Mr. Cornford and his critic, for the purposes of their argument, use the word "religion" in a wholly different sense from that in which it is used, or rather ought to be used, by the followers of Christ. They use it, that is, in its original rather than in its derived sense. The word, as the Romans used it, meant primarily ritual, ceremony, and observance. The Etruscans, for example, were described as a specially " religious " people, because they were specially meticulous in keeping up all the rules and traditions by which the gods were entreated, humoured, and placated. They were experts at a particular art. That Christianity in the past and in the present has accreted to itself a great deal of religion in this sense cannot be denied. In spite of the fact that our Lord's teachings were so openly and so clearly directed against the greatest ritualists of His or, perhaps, of any age, the Pharisees, the instinctive desire for ritual, which so pathetically pervades men's minds, has laid its hand on Christianity. With Christianity of this kind such speculations as those to be found in Mr. Cornford's book and in our critic's summary may possibly be concerned. Their conclusions may touch, and as they touch shiver, the religion of ritual and of forms and ceremonies. The religion of Christ they can- not affect or move by one hair's breadth. That stands, and will always stand, quite outside their scope and influence.
The religion of Christ is a state of being. It is a vision, not a series of observances ; a mood of power, not a creed ; a quickening of the spirit, not a dogma or a doctrine. It is the way the truth and the life—a revelation, an inspiration, an opening of a window in the soul, a new sense, a road to a new heaven and a new earth. The kingdom of God is within us. It is a light that lightens us from inside, not from out- side. We gain this constant influence, this peculiar grace, not from the practice of special rites, but from contact with the Spirit of Christ, by learning His great language, by catching His clear accents, by letting His words sink into our hearts. The pearl of great price is ours, and will remain ours no matter what new secrets are wrung from nature's reserves, no matter what the discoveries of the experts in the science of comparative religions. These are all worthy in themselves, all of good report, and it is childish to regard them as at enmity with Faith. They are not that, but merely beside the mark. The pure in heart, the sons of God, stand as before. No word of science can uncreate the children of the second birth. How well did he realize this who wrote that, though all the superficials and trappings of religion and of doctrine-should pass away, love, the essence of the religion of Christ, should remain, and should be enough. It is because the religion of Christ is a state of being, and a state of being that allows communion with God on the one hand and gives the fruits of good life on the other, that nought can prevail against it, and that it need fear nothing from any increase of human wisdom. It is impossible that any new learning can ever injure it. The religion of Christ is a life to be lived, not a form to be practised. If religion were merely ritual it would be the most irreligious thing in the world. Yet, as we have said, it has, and can have, no enmity to knowledge. Rather it must, as knowledge widens and deepens, and the scope of human faculty becomes greater, grow in power. The clearer and better the lantern the brighter shines the light within.
No doubt, in writing as we have written, we shall be arraigned by some people as greatly wanting in reverence, by others as greatly wanting in insight, and by yet another school as greatly wanting in learning. The last-named section will tell us that what we have said is not only useless, but very old, as well as very heretical. We shall be accused, that is, of verging on the Quaker doctrine of the inner light, if not indeed of that full-fledged antinomianism which, it will be said, has always haunted the Society of Friends. "Such an attitude and such speculations," we can imagine a convinced Roman Catholic or a High Churchman declaring, " sound very well when put forth in the abstract, but in practice we know how such things end. They end in a loose lawlessness of thought and deed, which becomes the very negation of Christianity. It was to protect men from the consequences of regarding religion as merely a state of being, and as an inner light, that the Church was founded, and had in her turn to found her system of forms and ceremonies, rules and regulations, rituals and symbolisnas." We shall not agree, but after all that is not the question. Whether we are using dangerous language or not, the fact remains that the essential spirit of Christ's teaching is not touched by investigations into the science of comparative religions or by the disinterment of the origins of religions belief or of philosophy. The spirit in communion with God receives no hurt. That for certain minds, nay, for the majority of minds, such communion may be induced by Christian ob- servances and by an appeal through ritual to the emotions we do not doubt or deny ; nor, again, do we doubt or deny that such observances may in this way lead to good life. In a word, we do not suggest for a moment that men who are devotees of ritual may not also hold fast, and do hold fast the true, the essential religion of Christ. Most assuredly they do, and the fact that they exclude from their conception of the Church those who are indifferent to ritual must not blind us to their possession of the true Christian spirit. But, again, and once more, observances are non-essentials, even if matters of spiritual convenience. Above and beyond, and withdrawn in the eternal ecstasy, and yet near and open to all mankind, dwells the divine Spirit of Christ in which all men may share, and by which in the truest and highest sense all the world shall be saved.
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