An Introduction to the Study of Comparative Religion

An Introduction to the Study of Comparative Religion

The Hartford-Lamson Lectures on "The Religions of the World" are delivered at Hartford Theological Seminary in connection with the Lamson Fund, which was established by a group of friends in honor of the late Charles M. Lamson, D.D., sometime President of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, to assist in preparing students for the foreign missionary field. The Lectures are designed primarily to give to such students a good knowledge of the religious history, beliefs, and customs of the peoples among whom they expect to labor. As they are delivered by scholars of the first rank, who are authorities in their respective fields, it is expected that in published form they will prove to be of value to students generally. The use of any science lies in its application to practical purposes. For Christianity, the use of the science of religion consists in applying it to show that Christianity is the highest manifestation of the religious spirit. To make this use of the science of religion, we must fully and frankly accept the facts it furnishes, and must recognise that others are at liberty to use them for any opposite purpose. But we must also insist that the science of religion is limited to the establishment of facts and is excluded from passing judgment on the religious value of those facts. The science of religion as a historical science is concerned with the chronological order, and not with the religious value, of its facts; and the order of those facts does not determine their value any more in the case of religion than in the case of literature or art. But if their value is a question on which the science refuses to enter, it does not follow that the question is one which does not admit of a truthful answer: science has no monopoly of truth. The value of anything always implies a reference to the future: to be of value a thing must be of use for some purpose, and what is purposed is in the future. Things have value, or have not, according as they are useful or not for our purposes. The conviction that we can attain our purposes and ideals, the conviction without which we should not even attempt to attain them is faith; and it is in faith and by faith that the man of religion proposes to {x} conquer the world. It is by faith in Christianity that the missionary undertakes to convert men to Christianity. The comparative value of different religions can only be ascertained by comparison of those religions; and the missionary, of all men, ought to know what is to be learnt from such comparison. It is sometimes supposed (wrongly) that to admit that all religions are comparable is to admit that all are identical; but, in truth, it is only because they differ that it is possible to compare them. For the purpose of comparison both the differences and the resemblances must be assumed to exist; and even for the purposes of the science of religion there is nothing to compel us to postulate a period in which either the differences or the resemblances were non-existent. But though there is nothing to compel us to assume that the lowest form in which religion is found was necessarily the earliest to exist, it is convenient for us to start from the lowest forms. For the practical purposes of the missionary it is desirable where possible to discover any points of resemblance or traits of connection between the lower form with which his hearers are familiar and the higher form to which he proposes to lead them. It is therefore proper for him and reasonable in itself to look upon the long history of religion as man's search for God, and to regard it as the function of the missionary to keep others in that search . . . 1-33 The belief in immortality is more prominent, though less intimately bound up with religion, amongst uncivilised than it is amongst civilised peoples. In early times the fancy luxuriates, unchecked, on this as on other matters. It is late in the history of religion that the immortality of the soul is found to be postulated alike by morality and religion. The belief that the soul exists after death doubtless manifested itself first in the {xi} fact that men dream of those who have died. But, were there no desire to believe, it may be doubted whether the belief would survive, or even originate. The belief originates in desire, in longing for one loved and lost; and dreams are not the cause of that desire, though they are one region in which it manifests itself, or rather one mode of its manifestation. The desire is for continued communion; and its gratification is found in a spiritual communion. Such communion also is believed to unite worshippers both with one another and with their God. Where death is regarded as a disruption of communion between the living and the departed, death is regarded as unnatural, as a violation of the original design of things, which calls for explanation; and the explanation is provided in myths which account for it by showing that the origin of death was due to accident or mistake. At first, it is felt that the mistake cannot be one without remedy: the deceased is invited "to come to us again." If he does not return in his old body, then he is believed to reappear in some new-born child. Or the doctrine of rebirth may be satisfied by the belief that the soul is reincarnated in animal form. This belief is specially likely to grow up where totem ancestors are believed to manifest themselves in the shape of some animal. Belief in such animal reincarnation has, in its origin, however, no connection with any theory that transmigration from a human to an animal form is a punishment. Up to this point in the evolution of the belief in immortality, the belief in another world than this does not show itself. Even when ancestor-worship begins to grow up, the ancestors' field of operations is in this world, rather than in the next. But the fact that their aid and protection can be invoked by the community tends to elevate them to the level of the god or gods of the community. This tendency, however, may be defeated, as it was in Juda, where the religious sentiment will not permit the difference between God and man to be blurred. {xii} Where the fact that the dead do not return establishes itself as incontrovertible, the belief grows up that as the dead continue to exist, it is in another world that their existence must continue. At first they are conceived to continue to be as they are remembered to have been in this life. Later the idea grows up that they are punished or rewarded there, according as they have been bad or good here; according as they have or have not in this life sought communion with the true God. This belief thus differs entirely from the earlier belief, e.g. as it is found amongst the Eskimo, that it is in this world the spirits of the departed reappear, and that their continued existence is unaffected by considerations of morality or religion. It is, however, not merely the belief in the next world that may come to be sanctified by religion and moralised. The belief in reincarnation in animal form may come to be employed in the service of religion and morality, as it is in Buddhism. There, however, what was originally the transmigration of souls was transformed by Gotama into the transmigration of character; and the very existence of the individual soul, whether before death or after, was held to be an illusion and a deception. This tenet pushes the doctrine of self-sacrifice, which is essential both to religion and to morality, to an extreme which is fatal in logic to morality and religion alike: communion between man and Godthe indispensable presupposition of both religion and moralsis impossible, if the very existence of man is illusory. The message of the missionary will be that by Christianity self-sacrifice is shown to be the condition of morality, the essence of communion with God and the way to life eternal . . . 34-69 ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 31875
Author: Jevons, F. B. (Frank Byron)
Release Date: Apr 3, 2010
Format: eBook
Language: English