possess the advantage of being easily reconcil-able on the one hand with the ethical tradition of humanism and on the other with the world-view of scientific naturalism, but it does not follow that it would solve our religious problems or provide modern civilisation with the spiritual dynamic of which it stands in need. For there are two factors to be considered. Just as it is possible to conceive of a religion which will satisfy man’s religious needs without being applicable to the social situation of modern Europe—as, for example, in Buddhism—so we can construct, at least in theory, a religion which would be adapted to the social needs of modern civilisation, but which would be incapable of satisfying the purely religious demands of the human spirit. Such a religion was constructed with admirable ingenuity and sociological knowledge by Comte in the nineteenth century, and it proved utterly lacking in religious vitality, and consequently also in human appeal. And a similar experiment which is being carried out with far less knowledge and greater passion by the modern Communists in Russia threatens to be even more sterile and inimical to man’s spiritual personality.
It is useless to judge a religion from the point of view of the politician or the social reformer.
We shall never create a living religion merely as 28
HUMANISM AND RELIGIOUS E X P E R I E N C E
a means to an end, a way out of our practical difficulties. For the religious view of life is the opposite to the utilitarian. It regards the world and human life sub specie aternitatis. It is only by accepting the religious point of view, by regarding religion as an end in itself and not as a means to something else, that we can discuss religious problems profitably. It may be said that this point of view belongs to the past, and that we cannot return to it. But neither can we escape from it. The past is simply the record of the experience of humanity, and if that experience testifies to the existence of a permanent human need, that need must manifest itself in the future no less than in the past.
What, then, is man’s essential religious need, judging by the experience of the past ? There is an extraordinary degree of unanimity in the response, although, of course, it is not complete.
One answer is God, the supernatural, the transcendent ; the other answer is deliverance, salvation, eternal life. And both these two elements are represented in some form or other in any given religion. The religion of ancient Israel, for example, may seem to concentrate entirely on the first of these two elements—the reality of God—and to have nothing to say about the immortality of the soul and the idea of eternal life. Yet the teaching of the prophets