But nothing is more apparent in this awakened interest in the subject of religion than that the old view of what constitutes religion has undergone, in some respects at least, an actual revolution. The narrow sectarian position of a generation ago has been shown to be wholly untenable; and religion, instead of being the possible acquisition of a few, we now see reaches its roots deep down into the very subsoil of humanity, and cannot help giving itself some sort of expression, for good or for ill, in the experiences of every individual. Hence the chief inquiry of our time on this subject is not any longer whether a man has any religion, but whether the religion that he does have is of any real value; whether it is a help or a hindrance to his own progress and the ultimate triumph of truth and right.

But before this question can properly be taken into consideration, we must make a careful scrutiny of another, namely, what exactly is to be meant by religion? On this point there is still great confusion, and in the present state of the study of religion no need is more imperative than to have this confusion cleared away, or at least reduced to a minimum.

We may be greatly helped to the attainment of this end by observing in the first place that religion is not to be confounded with religions. Religion is that out of which different forms of religion grow or develop. It stands related to religions about as the first man stands related to the whole human race. It is the germ or principle which lies at the foundation of all religions and out of which they all proceed.

No error can be greater than to begin our present investigation with such a definition of religion as excludes by its very terms all other religions than the

one that we ourselves most approve. This error is not an uncommon one among writers on the subject even in our own day. A distinguished Oxford professor, Sir Monier Monier-Williams, recently maintained that "a religion, in the proper sense of the word, must postulate the existence of one living and true God of infinite power, wisdom, and love, the Creator and Designer and Preserver of all things visible and invisible, besides other doctrines which he specified. Then he proceeded to exclude at once Buddhism from the list of religions as "no religion at all." Manifestly, a definition of religion should have in it what is applicable to all forms of religion from the lowest to the highest, and not merely what is true only of one.

In the second place, religion should not be identified with a belief in the existence of superhuman spirits. We are not here concerned with the question as to whether the first known variety of religion actually took on this form. It may be admitted at once, however, that most of the religions now current in the world do make a great deal of this belief. But what we maintain is that if the belief should turn out to be unfounded, religion would not be destroyed thereby.

It was formerly held that the wind is an immaterial spirit; that the sun, moon, and stars are gods and goddesses with their own separate ambitions and whims; that the tides ebb and flow and that plants grow and decay in direct obedience to spiritual powers. But everybody at all acquainted with the physical science of to-day is of course well aware of the fact that no such supernatural beings exist, and that these objects and their activities are satisfactorily accounted for on quite other grounds.

The untutored savage, when he awakes from a

dream, believes that he has been away on a journey, or that other people have visited him. But as he takes it for granted that his body does not make these excursions, he naturally concludes that his phantom or image makes them; and when he beholds his shadow on the ground or sees it reflected on still water, he naturally infers that his double self is following him about. But no psychologist of to-day would of course admit the validity of such an explanation for these or any similar mental states that might come within the range of human experience.

The realm of alleged superhuman spirits is constantly being lessened by modern research, and we have no way of telling at present where exactly this lessening process is going to end. Our point is that it is immaterial to our inquiry after the essential thing in religion as to where it does end. Many existing varieties of religion may have to go as many have gone already, but religion will remain. The doctrine of the existence or non-existence of superhuman spirits is not fundamental to its continuance.

One of the ablest advocates of this view of religion is Prof. E. B. Tylor. In his Primitive Culture (vol. i., pp. 424-5), after very properly insisting that the first requisite in a systematic study of the religions of primitive men is to lay down a rudimentary definition, he proceeds to criticise those generally in vogue. He finds the chief error of them all to consist in identifying religion with particular developments, rather than with the deeper motive which underlies them, and concludes by saying, "It seems best to fall back at once on this essential source, and simply to claim as a minimum definition of religion the belief in Spiritual Beings."

Now it is admitted that this belief may be a characteristic of all primitive religions; and, if we were merely treating of the history of religion, we might find this definition of much use. But we are looking for the germ or common principle of all religions, and that is something for which this conception of religion does not adequately suffice.

Again, we should not regard religion as primarily resting upon a belief in human immortality. Even so great a philosopher as Kant maintains that "without a belief in a future life no religion can be conceived to exist"; and John Fiske in his very helpful book; Through Nature to God, asserts that the "belief in the unseen world in which human beings continue to exist after death" is essential to religion. Both these thinkers forget that the early Jewish religion was without such belief, and that in many religions where it does exist it forms no important part of either belief or practice. Among the ancient Greeks immortality meant the immortality of the family or state rather than that of the individual.

In many religions whole classes are formally excluded from it and the doctrine is by no means universally held to-day. As Howerth well says in a recent article (Internat. Jour. of Ethics, Jan., 1903, p. 190): "What has the conception of immortality to do with the religious philosophy of those who hold, with the late Prof. Huxley, that religion is reverence and love for the ethical ideal, and the desire to realize that ideal in life? or with that of the philosopher Herbart, who considered sympathy with the universal dependence of men as the essential natural principle of religion?"

Important as this doctrine may be to some conceptions of the ultimate nature of the universe, religion

would not perish if it should turn out to be erroneous. For what may happen in eternity cannot be the determining cause of the existence of a thing here and now. If the doctrine of conditional immortality, advocated by so many in our day, should become a general view, the universal acceptance of the doctrine would not annihilate religion. The idea of immortality cannot therefore be regarded as its final basis or ground.

Nor can we clear up this subject of religion by making it primarily dependent upon the belief in one personal God. This belief is, to be sure, the dominant form of thought on the subject of religion in all civilized lands, and that much must be admitted in its favor. But by holding to this as a satisfactory definition of religion we should exclude the vast majority of the human race from the category of religious beings. For many maintain that no primitive races have this idea, and the Buddhistic religion with its almost untold number of adherents teaches just the opposite doctrine. Of course, we are not concerning ourselves with the truthfulness or the value of this belief. Our only contention now is that those who deny this doctrine do not destroy religion.

What man in history was ever more sincerely religious to the very core of his being than the philosopher Spinoza? His whole life was devoted to the advocacy of the doctrine that the only thing in this world worth striving for was to love and know God. Our salvation," he says, "or blessedness, or liberty, consists in a constant, or eternal love towards God." Yet he distinctly and deliberately rejected the personality of God as wholly out of harmony with a sound philosophy. Nature, or the World-Force, was the object of his reverence and love.