THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
the natural life attempts to assert. Therefore in every vital impulse death is prepared. But to find God means the overcoming of this fate. During every moment experienced in religious progress, whose import is regarded as of divine operation, the old and lifeless is simply discarded so that there is nothing to assert itself against the spiritual power that ever effects new miracles of complete victory and free submission.
The essence of religion is the awakening of man to self-contemplation. The first vital impulse is reverence for the real. A further step is the reflection upon one's utmost experience, the inquiry concerning the might in whose power all are. This proves to be the power which alone overcomes him, gains possession of his inmost self, and 8. Sum- approaches in beneficence to humiliate mary. him and sacrifice itself for him. Total realization of religion follows when, in the divine revelation received by experience, this spiritual power abstracts itself from the times and places of its manifestation, and becomes the sum of life. Then religion consists in intercourse with God, which is the immanence of the omnipotence of God and the obedience of a full submission that would conceive his presence and accept his command in every experience. The operation of religion in man is to the effect that the enemies of life are overcome and eternal life is imparted to him. This eternal life means not endless time-space but power to vanquish death, a life whose days are creative and whose inner riches overflow its environment as love and goodness. All vital religion in history requires to resolve itself again and again upon these simple fundamentals of all true religion. Its wholeness involves also the grateful respect for the human and for men through whom it is connected with the creative power of God. A fatal danger in connection with this is the temptation, in regarding the mediators of redemption, to overlook redemption, even God himself. In Christianity this danger is averted if Jesus Christ becomes known to men in his actuality and in the undeniable power of his inner life. For then, and only then, is piety toward him submission to the one God.
(W Herrmann.) II. Special Methods of Study: Even if there be a secret and incommunicable element in religious experience, this does not preclude a legitimate inquiry into the place and nature of religion in i. Possible human historical life. The depart- Modes of ments into which this investigation Studying naturally falls are the history, science, Religion, psychology, and philosophy of religion. Religion has embodied itself in customs, institutions, and ideals, and may therefore be studied in its historical conditions. It is, moreover, subject to the same laws of scientific explanation as are other human facts. As a matter of inner personal experience, it is amenable to psychological analysis and description. So far as religion involves a theory of reality — of first cause and final end, of the grounds of knowledge and the validity of the ideal, of man's relation to ultimate Being and to the infinite future — it invites the aid of philosophy and metaphysics. In actual practise these four depart-
ments can not be so separated that one is treated irrespective of the others; the divisions which are logical and made for convenience tend continually to fade out or to merge one into the other.
The history of religion deals with religious facts
as facts. At every point the human race as it
emerges in history already practises religion. Of
the religious life of prehistoric man
2. History many facts are indeed hopelessly lost, of Religion, but many may still be recovered by the
aid of archeology, ethnology, historic peoples in undeveloped condition, and analogy (see Comparative Religion, II.-V.). The aim here is to bring to description every custom, ordinance, myth, doctrine, and institution which rises in or expresses the religious feeling. The particular historian may conceive as his task to present these in concrete images without attempt at analysis or even at correlation (so Herodotus, in his " History"); or his purpose may be to fit these facts into a scheme of religious interpretation (Herbert Spencer, Principles of Sociology, London, 1882). As a result of this historical process, three facts stand out; that religion is a social phenomenon, that its object or objects are personal even though in the form of symbols, and that its development is associated with objects so different in form that no one of these can be held to be essential to religion.
The science of religion is concerned with explanation of the facts provided by historical inquiry. Its field is the same as that of the history of religion— beliefs, customs, institutions, and
3. Science ideals which have been determined by of Religion, man's relation to the supernatural. It
is to be observed, however, that it considers religious phenomena only on their human side; it is in no way concerned with the reality of God and his self-revelation, with the truth of man's relation to God, or with the ground of his hopes. The science of religion treats its material after the manner of other sciences. It makes use of psychology as disclosing the nature of consciousness; of sociology as occupied with social relations; of anthropology as revealing the history of man. It involves judgments in arranging religions as lower and higher, and determining the various stages of religious development and degeneration, together with the aspects that are pathological; and the judgments must be impartial, i.e., not without prejudice but free from unscientific bias. This science of religion aims, through discovering the stages, the direction, and the laws of development, to determine under what conditions religion develops or deteriorates, and finally to ascertain what is essential to it. It is legitimate to seek for the highest type of religion, partly by disclosing the element common in all religions, and partly by tracing this sentiment as it embodies itself in those religions in which it has come to its freest and most natural expression (see Comparative Religion).
Psychology opens a different pathway into the interpretation of religion. Inquiries here resolve themselves into various directions: the psychological origin of religion, the method and means of its development, the essential unity of the phenomena, the varieties which characterize these, and particular