By Auguste Sabatier Author of the "Apostle Paul" etc. NEW YORK JAMES POTT & COMPANY 119-121 WEST 23D STREET. 1910 CONTENTS PREFACE BOOK I.—RELIGION CHAPTER I THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ORIGIN AND THE NATURE OF RELIGION 1. First Critical Reflections 2. Initial Contradiction of the Psychological Consciousness 3. Religion the Prayer of the Heart CHAPTER II RELIGION AND REVELATION 1. The Mystery of the Religious Life 2. Mythological Notion of Revelation 3. Dogmatic Notion 4. Psychological Notion 5. C

This volume contains three parts which are related to each other as the three stories of one and the same edifice. The first treats of religion and its origin; the second of Christianity and its essence; the third of Dogma and its nature. Proceeding thus from the general to the particular, from the elementary forms of religion to its highest form, passing afterwards from religious phenomena to religious doctrines, I have endeavoured to develop a series of connected and progressive views which I

1. First Critical Reflections Why am I religious? Because I cannot help it: it is a moral necessity of my being. They tell me it is a matter of heredity, of education, of temperament. I have often said so to myself. But that explanation simply puts the problem further back; it does not solve it The necessity which I experience in my individual life I find to be still more invincible in the collective life of humanity. Humanity is not less incurably religious than I am. The cults it has espoused

1. The Mystery of the Religious Life "Thou wouldst not seek me hadst thou not already found me." In this word that Pascal heard amid his restless search, the whole mystery of piety is disclosed. If religion is the prayer of man, it may be said that revelation is the response of God, but only on condition that we add that this response is always, in germ at least, in the prayer itself. This thought struck me like a flash of light. It was the solution of a problem that had long appeared to me to b

In speaking of revelation we have already touched on the doctrines of inspiration and of miracle, which are dependencies of it, and, as it were, constituent parts. But these two notions are still so obscure in the public mind, and give rise to so many and such lively controversies, that it may be well to return to them and study them by themselves and in some detail. In this matter there are two causes of dispute and misunderstanding. The first is that everybody believes he ought to begin by giv

1. The Social Element in Religion Religion is not merely a phenomenon of the individual and inner life: it is also a social and historical phenomenon. Psychology lays bare its root, but history alone reveals its power and range. This social action of religion springs from its very essence. The phrase "communion of souls" is of religious origin and hue. The thing expressed by it—one of the most wonderful phenomena of collective moral life—is never perfectly realised save in religion and by religi

To understand Christianity we should need to see clearly and in one view the link which connects it with the religious evolution of mankind, the living originality by which it is distinguished, the succession and the character of the forms it has assumed. Such are the three points which we shall take up in turn. We must begin with its origins. There is never a complete break in the chain of history. Every phenomenon arises in its place and at its time. It has its antecedents, which prepare it an

1. The Problem We come at last to Christianity. What is its principle or essence? This question must be answered or we cannot judge of it aright. Now, during the eighteen centuries of its history, Christianity has taken so many and such various forms, it has received so many developments in every sense, it has become a thing so rich and luxuriant, that it is far from easy to discover beneath this thick growth of institutions, dogmas, ceremonies, and devotions the tap-root of the tree from which

1. The Evolution of the Christian Principle The distinction between the Christian principle and its successive realisations renders it easy to resolve the question, formerly so much debated, as to the perfectibility of Christianity. It is perfect piety, plenary union with God, consequently the absolute and definitive Religion. But, regarded in its historical evolution, not only is it perfectible, but it must ceaselessly progress, since, for it, to progress is to realise itself. The germ could no

1. Definition Dogma, in the strictest sense, is one or more doctrinal propositions which, in a religious society, and as the result of the decisions of the competent authority, have become the object of faith, and the rule of belief and practice. It would not be enough to say that a religious society has dogmas as a political society has laws. For the first, it is a much greater necessity. Moral societies not only need to be governed; they need to define themselves and to explain their raison d'

1. Three Prejudices I here encounter three prejudices which are, I think, the most inveterate in the world. The first is that dogmas are immutable; the second, that they die fatally the moment they are touched by criticism; the third, that they form the essence of religion, which rises or falls with them. I wish to show that dogmas have neither this pretended immobility nor this delicate fragility; that they live by an inner life extraordinarily resistant and fecund, and that the criticism of do

1. The Mixed Character of Dogmatics We have shown the necessity of a free criticism of dogmas. This criticism, if it is religious, will at the same time be positive; it will tend not to destroy, but to distinguish, in each dogma, that which is truly religious and permanent from that which is philosophical and fleeting. Such is the object of the discipline that, in the schools, is called Dogmatics , or the Science of Dogmas. It remains to define its task and to point out the resources which it ha

He who says consciousness says science, or at least, the beginning of science. Consciousness implies a representation. In other words, no modification of the ego becomes conscious except by awakening in the mind a representative image of the object that has produced it and of the relation of that object to the ego. All our sensations and all our feelings are accompanied by images. The religious sentiment does not attain to the light of consciousness in any other way. It is because it is a state

Before laying down the pen, I ought perhaps to reply to one or two objections. The first reproach that has been addressed to me is contained in the words, "Naturalistic Evolutionism." A conception more or less materialistic of the universe is thus attributed to me, according to which, like Herbert Spencer, I should explain all things by the single law of evolution, and end sooner or later by reducing the laws of the moral world to the laws of the physical world, since I make of the first a simpl