The Precinct of Religion in the Culture of Humanity

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1908 Excerpt: ... ligious precinct. The sincere spirit and the essential limitations of religion must now be examined. 2. The Limitation of Religion. The spirit of religious thought in the present has been that of construction rather than controversy. Until the dawning of the nineteenth century the method in religion had consisted either in attack or defence, and nowhere was to be witnessed a calm consideration of those things which are essential to religion and vital to its character. Yet the construction of philosophy of religion was not destined to shake off entirely the skirts of the long conflict, and in more than one way has religious inquiry been warped and otherwise rendered ineffective. Two tendencies have con-trived to hinder the progress of sincere religious thinking; one is secularism, the other sacerdotalism; the first characterizes theology, the second, science. Sacerdotalism has given religion such an elevation that it has made it unsteady; it has done this by taking away its foundation in human nature and human culture, leaving it in mid-air. On the other hand, secular science of religion has allowed its zeal for facts and phenomenological generalization to lower religion to the level of mere anthropology. Both the ideal and the real must be surveyed sincerely in the history of ethnic religion. Not only the flower but the root must be surveyed and analysed. Sacerdotalism has turned away from positive, psychological religion, just as secularism has spurned everything but these humanistic products. Both of these points of departure must be abandoned by philosophy of religion. Sacerdotalism pursues the subject of religion in the spirit of idealism, but it does not do justice to positive religion as a fact in the individual's consciousness, or as an element in th...