A cosmic view of religion

These pages undertake to deal with religion in its generic aspects, and from the side of the universe. The religious instinct is such a persistent radical, and so evidently here to stay, that the whole issue of the soul's fellowship with the Divine may be investigated from the viewpoint of the unity of creation. If a man has come up out of things, he will not, in the long run, be largely influenced by any theory of detachment.

The better understandings, therefore, of what this human is, in his inmost being, are to be reached by a careful estimate of his permanent outward correspondences, and of his actions under them, and of the degree of mastery which they have over him.

We have come to the time when the serious-minded refuse to go to school to the teacher who has to have himself whipped into acceptance of the natural truths that research has uncovered. So great and unquestioned have been the recent advances in psychology, chemistry, physics, and biology, that the whole quantum of human. knowledge seems to demand a synthetic rehabilitation. If religious thought is to be kept en rapport with these newer acquisitions, some of its most familiar appeals sorely need the undergirding of a class of evidence that set themselves into the framework of things. The laboratories now offer to furnish the elements of a sound philosophy of religion; and, in the right hands, they will be able to make good.

The stronger scientific currents have set in towards the conception of the spiritual nature of all energy. Un- expectedly, an irreverent and long search after the last material fact has brought itself face to face with another somewhat, which threatens to block progress until it gets scientific recognition. As might be expected, tradition is out of sympathy with this new method of approach to the invisible if for no other reason than that it has upset the ark and gone around to see what is on the other side. But while the fearful-minded are in distress, the foundations are being strengthened. For instance, thirty years ago a great scholar wrote three hundred pages to show that worship had its beginnings in the dreams and fears of savage men.

The purpose of that writing makes of it a grotesque story. But since it has had. new evaluation, and has been historically gestated, it is now classified as indubitable evidence of the cosmic Footings of religion. It proves a fundamental world fact. The term spirit is here understood to be divested of much of its common meanings pulled up from some of its root inheritances philologically washed and scoured, and made to signify an all-pervasive, causative intelligence; never divorced from the forms of matter; but manifest through phenomena, in terms of positive knowledge.

W. R. HALSTEAD.

A cosmic view of religion - PDF by William Riley Halstead