The Foundations of Religious Faith

102:2.1Ob­serv­ing minds and dis­crim­i­nat­ing souls know re­li­gion when they find it in the lives of their fel­lows. Re­li­gion re­quires no def­i­ni­tion; we all know its so­cial, in­tel­lec­tual, moral, and spir­i­tual fruits. And this all grows out of the fact that re­li­gion is the prop­erty of the hu­man race; it is not a child of cul­ture. True, one’s per­cep­tion of re­li­gion is still hu­man and there­fore sub­ject to the bond­age of ig­no­rance, the slav­ery of su­per­sti­tion, the de­cep­tions of so­phis­ti­ca­tion, and the delu­sions of false phi­los­o­phy.

102:2.2One of the char­ac­ter­is­tic pe­cu­liar­i­ties of gen­uine re­li­gious as­sur­ance is that, not­with­stand­ing the ab­so­lute­ness of its af­fir­ma­tions and the stanch­ness of its at­ti­tude, the spirit of its ex­pres­sion is so poised and tem­pered that it never con­veys the slight­est im­pres­sion of self-as­ser­tion or ego­is­tic ex­al­ta­tion. The wis­dom of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence is some­thing of a para­dox in that it is both hu­manly orig­i­nal and Ad­juster deriva­tive. Re­li­gious force is not the prod­uct of the in­di­vid­ual’s per­sonal pre­rog­a­tives but rather the out­work­ing of that sub­lime part­ner­ship of man and the ev­er­last­ing source of all wis­dom. Thus do the words and acts of true and un­de­filed re­li­gion be­come com­pellingly au­thor­i­ta­tive for all en­light­ened mor­tals.

102:2.3It is dif­fi­cult to iden­tify and an­a­lyze the fac­tors of a re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence, but it is not dif­fi­cult to ob­serve that such re­li­gious prac­ti­tion­ers live and carry on as if al­ready in the pres­ence of the Eter­nal. Be­liev­ers re­act to this tem­po­ral life as if im­mor­tal­ity al­ready were within their grasp. In the lives of such mor­tals there is a valid orig­i­nal­ity and a spon­tane­ity of ex­pres­sion that for­ever seg­re­gate them from those of their fel­lows who have im­bibed only the wis­dom of the world. Re­li­gion­ists seem to live in ef­fec­tive eman­ci­pa­tion from har­ry­ing haste and the painful stress of the vi­cis­si­tudes in­her­ent in the tem­po­ral cur­rents of time; they ex­hibit a sta­bi­liza­tion of per­son­al­ity and a tran­quil­lity of char­ac­ter not ex­plained by the laws of phys­i­ol­ogy, psy­chol­ogy, and so­ci­ol­ogy.

102:2.4Time is an in­vari­able el­e­ment in the at­tain­ment of knowl­edge; re­li­gion makes its en­dow­ments im­me­di­ately avail­able, al­beit there is the im­por­tant fac­tor of growth in grace, def­i­nite ad­vance­ment in all phases of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. Knowl­edge is an eter­nal quest; al­ways are you learn­ing, but never are you able to ar­rive at the full knowl­edge of ab­so­lute truth. In knowl­edge alone there can never be ab­so­lute cer­tainty, only in­creas­ing prob­a­bil­ity of ap­prox­i­ma­tion; but the re­li­gious soul of spir­i­tual il­lu­mi­na­tion knows, and knows now. And yet this pro­found and pos­i­tive cer­ti­tude does not lead such a sound-minded re­li­gion­ist to take any less in­ter­est in the ups and downs of the prog­ress of hu­man wis­dom, which is bound up on its ma­te­rial end with the de­vel­op­ments of slow-mov­ing sci­ence.

102:2.5Even the dis­cov­er­ies of sci­ence are not truly real in the con­scious­ness of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence un­til they are un­rav­eled and cor­re­lated, un­til their rel­e­vant facts ac­tu­ally be­come mean­ing through en­cir­cuit­ment in the thought streams of mind. Mor­tal man views even his phys­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment from the mind level, from the per­spec­tive of its psy­cho­log­i­cal reg­istry. It is not, there­fore, strange that man should place a highly uni­fied in­ter­pre­ta­tion upon the uni­verse and then seek to iden­tify this en­ergy unity of his sci­ence with the spirit unity of his re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. Mind is unity; mor­tal con­scious­ness lives on the mind level and per­ceives the uni­ver­sal re­al­i­ties through the eyes of the mind en­dow­ment. The mind per­spec­tive will not yield the ex­is­ten­tial unity of the source of re­al­ity, the First Source and Cen­ter, but it can and some­time will por­tray to man the ex­pe­ri­en­tial syn­the­sis of en­ergy, mind, and spirit in and as the Su­preme Be­ing. But mind can never suc­ceed in this uni­fi­ca­tion of the di­ver­sity of re­al­ity un­less such mind is firmly aware of ma­te­rial things, in­tel­lec­tual mean­ings, and spir­i­tual val­ues; only in the har­mony of the tri­unity of func­tional re­al­ity is there unity, and only in unity is there the per­son­al­ity sat­is­fac­tion of the re­al­iza­tion of cos­mic con­stancy and con­sis­tency.

102:2.6Unity is best found in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence through phi­los­o­phy. And while the body of philo­sophic thought must ever be founded on ma­te­rial facts, the soul and en­ergy of true philo­sophic dy­nam­ics is mor­tal spir­i­tual in­sight.

102:2.7Evo­lu­tion­ary man does not nat­u­rally rel­ish hard work. To keep pace in his life ex­pe­ri­ence with the im­pelling de­mands and the com­pelling urges of a grow­ing re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence means in­ces­sant ac­tiv­ity in spir­i­tual growth, in­tel­lec­tual ex­pan­sion, fac­tual en­large­ment, and so­cial ser­vice. There is no real re­li­gion apart from a highly ac­tive per­son­al­ity. There­fore do the more in­do­lent of men of­ten seek to es­cape the rig­ors of truly re­li­gious ac­tiv­i­ties by a species of in­ge­nious self-de­cep­tion through re­sort­ing to a re­treat to the false shel­ter of stereo­typed re­li­gious doc­trines and dog­mas. But true re­li­gion is alive. In­tel­lec­tual crys­tal­liza­tion of re­li­gious con­cepts is the equiv­a­lent of spir­i­tual death. You can­not con­ceive of re­li­gion with­out ideas, but when re­li­gion once be­comes re­duced only to an idea, it is no longer re­li­gion; it has be­come merely a species of hu­man phi­los­o­phy.

102:2.8Again, there are other types of un­sta­ble and poorly dis­ci­plined souls who would use the sen­ti­men­tal ideas of re­li­gion as an av­enue of es­cape from the ir­ri­tat­ing de­mands of liv­ing. When cer­tain vac­il­lat­ing and timid mor­tals at­tempt to es­cape from the in­ces­sant pres­sure of evo­lu­tion­ary life, re­li­gion, as they con­ceive it, seems to pre­sent the near­est refuge, the best av­enue of es­cape. But it is the mis­sion of re­li­gion to pre­pare man for bravely, even hero­ically, fac­ing the vi­cis­si­tudes of life. Re­li­gion is evo­lu­tion­ary man’s su­preme en­dow­ment, the one thing which en­ables him to carry on and “en­dure as see­ing Him who is in­vis­i­ble.” Mys­ti­cism, how­ever, is of­ten some­thing of a re­treat from life which is em­braced by those hu­mans who do not rel­ish the more ro­bust ac­tiv­i­ties of liv­ing a re­li­gious life in the open are­nas of hu­man so­ci­ety and com­merce. True re­li­gion must act. Con­duct will be the re­sult of re­li­gion when man ac­tu­ally has it, or rather when re­li­gion is per­mit­ted truly to pos­sess the man. Never will re­li­gion be con­tent with mere think­ing or un­act­ing feel­ing.

102:2.9We are not blind to the fact that re­li­gion of­ten acts un­wisely, even ir­re­li­giously, but it acts. Aber­ra­tions of re­li­gious con­vic­tion have led to bloody per­se­cu­tions, but al­ways and ever re­li­gion does some­thing; it is dy­namic!