the most conspicuous non-essentials of religion. BELIEF IN GOD A NON-ESSENTIAL. Belief in God or gods is not an indispensible element of religion. Buddhists are unquestionably religious, yet admittedly believe in no God. It is doing violence to language to say that the founder of "Christian Science" believes in a God, when she writes, "the allness of mind and the nothingness of matter," and "God is love and love is God," it is because, for the moment, as one under the influence of an opiate or in a trance, she has suspended relations with the non-ego, and therefore denies the existence of objective realities. She is without a God-concept, and without a belief in an unknowable reality, as an objective stimulus of her religious sentiments. She apotheosizes only love-emotion, not a concept, nor an objectivity. Her efforts at describing her emotional states in terms of objectives, lead her unavoidably into that verbal fantasticism, which so successfully eludes all our efforts at translation into concepts, not mutually destructive. No proper use of the word "God" in any literal sense will allow the assertion that Mrs. Eddy believes in a God. She has a subjective condition which she describes figuratively as God-like; it is an emotional substitute for the Godconcept of others and not a "feeling background" for it. Yet we cannot deny her religiosity. In one aspect, she is even more religious than many of her contemporaries, since she-more than they exemplifies the truth that "the kingdom of God is within you," is subjective. Berkeley's idealism was the product of an analysis of consciousness, an inquiry into the existence of an objective cause for our concepts, with a view to determining the sufficiency of the warrant for our belief in the existence of objective realities. Not so with Mrs. Eddy. She scorns "the erring testimony of mortal sense," and an analysis of it is beneath her. She has no need of its help, for "By our faith are we justified." Berkeley's idealism was reached by the more or less accurate use of the scientific method and was the expression of a belief within the domain of science or philosophy. Mrs. Eddy's idealism, without even a pretense of scientific processes, is the mere misinterpretation of subjective emotional states, the apotheosis of love-emotion. Her idealism is religious. Likewise the Brahmin has nothing which can properly be called a God. What we carelessly designate his God, is, in fact, but a substitute. He calls it: "The highest self," which again shows its subjective origin. The Vedantist believes in a self within the person, which is the carrier of his personality, and a self without a person, which is the carrier of the world, "God the highest self,-and these two selves are ultimately the same self." In its adaptation to modern mystic cults, man sometimes comes to be described as "a conscious center of the all-mind," etc. The religio-idealistic speculations are but different explanations of the same subjective states-love-emotions-which accompany and induce the thought of God, with those who religiously believe in God. It is this wholly subjective source for the presence or absence of a belief in God, and the longing to put one's self into agreeable relations with him, or His substitute, an infinite self, which distinguishes the religious from its corresponding scientific or philosophical belief. SCIENTIFIC BELIEF IN GOD. Since belief in God is not an indispensible phenomenon of religion it follows that mere belief in God cannot constitute one a religious person. When a scientist using the materials and methods of the physical sciences reached the conclusion of Professor Häckel that there is no God, he is not engaged in religious exercises. He simply has a more or less logical conclusion within the domain of science about a religious subject-matter. If by using similar materials and the same scientific method he reaches a contrary conclusion, as did the Duke of Argyle, this still is not religion, and again he has only a more or less logical conclusion within the domain of science about a religious subject-matter. This is no more a matter of religion than belief in the multiplication table. The methods and generalizations of science may verify or modify our religious convictions, but standing alone, are not, and cannot initiate religion. Something must be super-added or precede a scientific process or conclusion, before it becomes religion. The Rev. Jonathan Edwards announces the same conclusion in these words: "He that has doctrinal knowledge and speculation only without affection, never is engaged in the business of religion." The Rev. G. W. Allen points out his conception of the difference between the religionists' and scientists' attitude toward the idea of God, by the following words: "Can a man by searching find out God? The presumed answer is 'No.' Mark now the different attitude with regard to this answer, taken by the materialist, the mystic, and him who stands between the two, the intellectual theologian. The materialist says at once, "Then let us devote our efforts to what we can find out.' The intellectual theologian says, 'If we cannot find God, we can perhaps find out something about Him.' The mystic says, 'If I cannot find God, perhaps God can find me." This again makes plain the fact that belief in God is not of the essence of religion because such belief to be religious must have the subjective warrant of an "indwelling God," without which it is a mere conclusion of science. IMMORTALITY NON-ESSENTIAL. 66 religions to know that belief in an indi- Vedantism, whose most distinguished The Samaritans held with the Sadducees, that there was no resurrection nor life eternal. Wu Ting-Fang, the Chinese Ambassador to the United States, says: "It must not be said that Confucius denies the existence of these things [relating to the immortality of the soul], but regards all speculation upon them as useless and impracticable. He would be called an agnostic in these days. 'What is death ?' asked a disciple One need but examine some historic of him; and he replied, 'You do n't know life yet, how can you know about death ?' "The fact is that only in Christendom and Islam is the essential immortality of the individual spirit assumed. To the contention that belief in eternal life has been held always and everywhere and by all men, the only reply is that the facts are not so." If belief in a spiritual life, after physical death, is not an indispensable prerequisite to religion, it follows that the affirmation of such belief, standing alone cannot constitute one a religious person. We may apply purely scientific methods to the testimony of others (spiritualists, for example), or to the facts of the physical universe, and reach the conclusion (more or less logically) that there is such a post-mortem life. But that conviction, thus reached, is a conclusion within the domain of science or philosophy, not a conviction of religion. It is a scientific conviction upon a religious subject of contemplation; it is not religion. As well might one say that a table of logarithms, or the statement of the law of gravity, presents a religious conviction, simply because innumerable religious persons believe them to be true and useful. Belief in a future existence must be classified as secular or religious, according to its source-its reason for being. This same method of analysis can be applied to every article of every religious creed, and no matter how essential any dogma may be to some particular religion, it will always clearly appear not to be of the essence of religion in general. RELIGION ALWAYS NON-SCIENTIFIC. Strauss somewhere says, that: "None but a book-student could ever imagine that a creation of the brain, woven of poetry and philosophy, can take the place of religion." To demonstrate this, we have only to substitute for the familiar terms of personal piety, which speak of the "human soul" and a humanly responsive "God," any of their modern scientific equivalents, when the metaphysics are discharged. Will the Benedicite swell with the same tones of joy when it has sung, "Bless the Eternal Law, all ye its works, Bless the Eternal Law, O my synthesis of organs": Will the contrition which now cries, "A broken heart thou dost not despise," pour out its sorrows to a deaf ideal, and shed its passionate tears on an abstraction that cannot wipe them away? Will any moonlit form be seen kneeling in our Gethsemanes, and rise from prostrate anguish to sublime repose through the prayer, "O, Thou Eternal, not ourselves that makes for righteousness, if it be possible, let the cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt." Will any crucified one lose the bitterness of death in crying: "Oh, stream of tendency, into thy hands I commit my synthesis of mind"? And to the martyr, stoned to death, will the "Religion of Monism" offer any satisfactory heavenly vision of celestial reward, when he exclaims: "Great Eusamble of Humanity receive me!" These illustrations can hardly leave any doubt upon the question that no religion can ever be constructed upon any mere scientific abstractions or generalizations. It might be contended that a clear and unified view of the Universe will some day remove in individuals the necessity for a religion, but it can never perform religious functions for those in whose nature religion is still a necessity. It is the scientists who have most often sinned in the matter of unwarrantedly coupling religion with science, as a means, perhaps unconsciously employed, of retaining for themselves and their convictions, classification with "respectable" orthodoxy, such as could not be otherwise attained. Thus we have innumerable cults designated by such titles, as "The Religion of Science,' "Cosmic Religion," "Monistic Religion," "The Religion of Nature," "The Religion of Ethics," and "The Religion of Humanity," etc., etc. Space limits will not permit me to indulge in an exhaustive analysis of religious essence, but enough has been said, I believe, to warrant my indicating the following conclusions as to the essential difference between religious and scientific or secular factors. In religion the source of authority for its beliefs and activities is subjective experiences believed not to be dependent for their existence upon material objective stimuli. To describe these subjective processes for the acquisition of religious knowledge such phrases are used as an act of faith, an assurance of the heart, the inward miracle of grace, and the inward monitions of the spirit. Science, on the contrary, deals only in objectives, and in our relation with them finds its only source of knowledge. Even when psychic phenomena are being studied the scientist must consider the mental phenomena objectively. From this difference in the source of religious and scientific knowledge, comes an unavoidable difference of method to be pursued for the acquisition of their respective truths. The religionist resorts to faith, to prayer, to spiritual exercises, to silent communion with unseeable powers, superhuman intelligences, or extra-physical personages, as a means of securing those subjective experiences from which "he knows because he feels, and is firmily convinced because strongly agitated." The scientist on the contrary can sum up his method in an application of the processes of synthesis and analysis to our human experiences with our material environments. From these differences of source and method comes also a difference of aim. The scientist is concerned with the laws of nature, under which are included not merely things and their forces, but men and their ways, to the end that human happiness here and now may be increased by a more perfect adjustment to the conditions of our present material well being. On the other hand, religion is primarily concerned with the laws of our "spiritual," that is our superphysical nature, to the end that man's happiness in some other existence may be increased through the individual's adjustment to the conditions of "spiritual" growth and "spiritual" wellbeing, especially for some other time and place. The scientist, or secularist, never subordinates the human happiness of this existence to that of any other. The religionist, on the other hand, whenever a conflict arises between the joys of this life and those of some other kind of existence, always must sacrifice the present for the advancement of that other super-physical existence. These distinctions are of the highest practical importance, and always to be observed by a secular state, when making laws for its citizens. Where a union of church and state is forbidden there cannot properly be any statutory enforcement of religious edicts on morality or anything else. The secular state can and must deal only with the social relations of man according to their social utility, as that is discovered in nature's moral law and never as it is read into natural law from the ethical sentimentalizing of those whose sources of authority in matters of morals are not primarily based upon secular considerations, and whose methods of arriving at moral truth are not the methods of the scientist and whose objects, because religious, are such as are not entrusted to the accomplishment of a secular state. By thus clarifying our vision as to the essential difference between the religious activities of the individual and the functions of a secular state, much improper legislation and unseemly controversy can and should be avoided. THEODORE SCHROEDER. New York City. ZIONISM OR SOCIALISM: WHICH WILL SOLVE THE A JEWISH QUESTION? BY SAUL BEAUMONT. its once famous capital-Zion. And since its destruction, his heartrending lamentations reëcho in all the corners of the earth. Nothing can appease him in his age-long sorrow for the lost glories of Jerusalem. Groanful is this outcry of the sorrowing Jew. From year to year he repeats his inspiring slogan, hoping that some day he will return into the land of his forefathers, out of which he was driven by the resistless forces of social evolution; that some day he also will take his place among the independent nations of the earth; and then an end will come to his centuries-long suffering and ceaseless persecution. MONG the divers questions of general importance that have of late arisen in the arena of social activity, the question of the reestablishment of an independent Jewish state, commonly known as "Zionism," has also taken its place; and although at first insignificant "Lishuno haboh biiroshulaim"in its scope, and ignored by the rationally!)"Next year we will be in Jerusalem”thinking Jews themselves, it is now is the cry of the orthodox Jew at the assuming considerable proportions, and culmination of his prayers on every therefore it begets recognition as a Passover night since the downfall of social factor to cope with. As the Judea and the scattering of its inhabidream of philosophers and aspiration of tants all over the world. fanatics, this desire to reconstruct Judea was harmless enough; but when it is beginning to develop into a general agressive movement, which, if not checked may somewhat hinder the solution of problems exceedingly greater-a word of warning must be sounded. Moreover, as in the onward march of social forces every retarding factor must be avoided, and as Zionism may develop into a formidable obstacle in the progress of mankind, it therefore must be dealt with as must every other social infection, in order to clear the way for the general movement of economic emancipation. Then, again, it is regrettable that so many idealists should exert their energy on mirages in the skies of Judaism, while there is much greater need of their services among the progressive forces of to-day. And because of this retrogressiveness of the sons of Israel, an analysis of their aspirations forces itself to the front. To begin with: What is this Zionism, and what are its objects? Zionism is the highest ideal of the orthodox Jew. It is inborn in him from times bygone, and in it he sees the restoration of his national independence. Zionism means to him the repossession of the Holy Land and the resurrection of Such is the conception of the orthodox Jew of the word Zion, which was in recent years clothed in a more befitting mantle by his "liberal" compatriots and surnamed Zionism. Zionism, then, is a theory of renationalization of the Jewish race and its sole aim is the reëstablishment of an independent Jewish state in Palestine or thereabouts. And amongst its advocates, from the late Dr. Herzel to its present supporters, can be found a number of intelligent men, who are endeavoring to mold it into existence, and in that direction are expending considerable time and energy. To the ordinary observer the activity of these leaders of Jewish nationalism would seem quite rational. "Let them organize their race, buy Palestine from |