R I Mysteries of Religion ELIGIOUS practices and beliefs, other than those to which we have grown accustomed, appear strange to us. The ceremonies and religious ideas of the "heathen" often strike the Christian as weird, and even foolish, while the same heathen may look upon Christian practices with amazement or stand unmoved in the presence of what to the Christian mind are the most sacred realities. But it is not necessary to contemplate these radical differences in religion to discover in the various forms of religious behavior evidences of inner secrets, unspoken and inexpressible things that move the heart of the believer, but appear merely exotic when viewed from without. Catholic and Jew and the various Protestant sects have each something which the others do not and doubtless can not "understand." What are these inner realities? To what motives and desires in human nature do they minister? What is here seeking to express itself? And what, viewed as forms of adaptation, is the value of these queer types of behavior? In those moments when we pause and look over our shoulders with flashes of curiosity or illumination that seem to come from regions outside our early training and daily routine, even our own most commonplace religious practices must strike us as rather inexplicable things for creatures like ourselves to be doing. We find people, whose actions are normally fairly well adjusted to a world of familiar objects, suddenly making curious gestures, speaking strange words, using unaccustomed tones of voice, addressing invisible persons, ceasing from labor on certain days, or abstaining from food and normal sex relationships for long periods, again standing in awe of certain persons, places, books. Frequently we find our fellows and ourselves modifying our conduct according to commandments imposed upon us by some invisible authority and without regard to the ordinary results in experience. And yet again we find people calling themselves sinners, seeking to be delivered from a burden of nameless guilt. Ask such persons just what are the concrete misdeeds which trouble their memories and often they cannot tell. The explanations commonly given for such actions never quite explain. They always seem to presuppose something still more difficult. And this is equally true whether the explanation is offered by the religious devotee himself or by the student of religion. Those scholars of our day who have the habit of looking on all forms of behavior as modes of adaptation to environment would appear to find difficulty in offering an account of religious practices. A common method is that of anthropology, which seeks to trace traditional religious customs and beliefs back to some simple primitive origin. This method has its advantages; it is scientific. It treats its subject as a natural phenomenon. And by tracing the steps of the advance from the primitive to the modern it brings religious progress within the evolutionary process, shows its relations to the general advance of culture and the development of institutions, and throws much light upon the history of various religious practices. But it can tell us very little about religion as experience. Thus we may learn much about the deposits of religion in history, but very little about religious interests themselves. What we wish to learn is why people behave in ways that may be termed religious. Why are they evidently obliged in vast numbers and for long periods to entertain certain fixed beliefs. What is the nature and real meaning of these things. To reach if possible a better understanding of this real meaning, this secret "under-side" of religious phenomena is the aim of our present study. We shall assume that something here is seeking at once to disguise and reveal itself. Something very vital to the human psyche, yet something that is for the most part hidden from the ordinary consciousness of the believer. We shall attempt to bring to consciousness some of these unrecognized and unattended religious motives. We shall strive to see them in the light of present day psychology. We shall study certain facts of religious experience, not with the purpose of rationalizing religion as such, but rather in order that we may gain a more penetrating insight into human nature. Most men, in all stages of culture, are religious beings. Religious practices |