PERSONAL RELIGION IT CHAPTER ONE PERSONAL RELIGION T is well known today that religion began in the social consciousness of man. It was primitively the concern of the whole community rather than simply the individual. It was not only included in the community consciousness but was the controlling ele ment in that consciousness. It was so thoroughly social that the individual had a right to religion only as he was a member of the community. From this we perceive that the present day social emphasis upon religious life is taking us back to the primitive conception of religion. In studying the history of Jewish religion as found in the Old Testament, the scholarship of today agrees that it was the community, or the people as a whole, and not the individual, which had a relation to the deity, worshipped him, was acceptable to him and came under his favor, or sinned against him and called forth his wrath. Prof. Walter R. Betteridge of the Rochester Theological Seminary has recently given to us a very able and valuable treatise on the emergence of the individual in Jewish religion. He states that we are able to fix with mathematical exactness the date when the centre of emphasis was shifted from the nation to the individual. He declares that the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel were the first teachers of the new doctrine. Jer. 31: 30 and Ezek. 18: 1-4. Judaism did not easily part with the community conception of religion however. It still insisted that only as one obeyed the community and submitted to its ordinances and requirements could he have access to God and be accepted by him. We are glad that it did not separate entirely from social religion, for there is a great truth in the idea that the individual is saved as he is a part of his community. The fact is that both are true. It is only the overemphasis of the social or the individual that is erroneous. It is the happy balancing of man's individual responsibility and opportunity before God and man, of his right to respond to the call of the divine and human, unhindered by others and of his place in the community of his fellows that represents the truth of the matter. There is no clash between the individual and social conceptions of religion. They are interdependent ideals. Humanity is made up of individuals. We may conceive of religious life just as broadly as possible and yet never for a moment be able to declare that its experience is not fundamentally one of the individual. The generalizing of a religious experience does not make the religion of a single person unimportant, for it is only as the individual person comes to know the reality of religion, that humanity can be conscious of it. Personal religion is essential to all spiritual, moral and social progress of mankind. However we may reason en masse regarding humanity, we should not overlook this fact. As religion is developed in man's personality, God's will is done and human life progress is secured. Some one has said that the state is simply the "individual writ large.” This statement makes real to us the importance of the religious life of that individual. Religion to be universalized must be personalized. Jesus spent time with single persons. He never belittled the power and range of a human life. To have religion truly experienced in individual human lives was his passion. There is a question as to how clearly he perceived and endeavored to impress upon the people around him any comprehensive social program. What he did surely try to do was to secure in humanity the spiritualizing of all human life experiences and relationships. He saw no way for that to be done except by securing this ideal and purpose in the individual as a centre. He knew his Kingdom depended upon that. To have people vitally and genuinely religious persons, satisfied him. Programs would largely take care of themselves. He was not obliged to think them out in detail. There are many varying views of personal religion in the minds of good people. Perhaps no two agree perfectly as to what the qualities, experience and expression of it are. And this notwithstanding the fact that most of us have been trained in the school of religion since babyhood. We find that definitions differ radically. Much that is fundamental to one is entirely secondary to another. One person is confident that he is experiencing personal religion because of certain beliefs which he has subscribed to, ordinances which he has submitted to, and activities he has become engaged in, while to another all of these appear to be anything but evidences that he knows what religion is. So much that is not religion, has been considered religion, that some people have about concluded that there is not any religion. It is also quite true that many good people are sorely perplexed regarding it. While some are confident, they are greatly troubled and in serious doubt. When they judge by some standards they think they are religious but according to others they know they are not. They really desire to be sure about the matter. They have great concern about it, therefore they institute thoughtful inquiry concerning it. While many fail to understand the great essentials of personal religion, some actually turn away from it because of the evidence of sham connected with it and others are perplexed even to doubt while they honestly search for it. It behooves all to make a careful study of it. Deception here is disastrous. Each person should have clear ideas of its fundamental characteristics, and this not primarily to satisfy his own mind and heart regarding his own religious condition so that he may feel perfectly safe, but that he may be able to assist others who are struggling through a religious maze and may be able intelligently to deal with inquiring and even irreligious humanity everywhere. We are sure that God does not want us to be in the dark regarding this most important matter. There is light somewhere. Patient research, thoughtful consideration, discrimination in elements, and following the leadings of the spirit of God, will reward every honest inquirer. We naturally turn to Jesus for a definition of personal religion. For while we recognize the universality of the religious impulse and that all men are more or less religious and that religious experience is based upon the fact that the religious sense is fundamental to all human life and seeks for an expression according to the direction given to it by enlight enment, environment and education, yet we approach the subject from the standpoint of Christian believers. We ask not for a Pagan interpretation of personal religion, even if Plato did experience it, or for a Heathen conception of it, even if some devout Buddhists did know a little of it, or for a Mohammedan idea of it, even if some sincere believer in Allah the one God, does know the true God, or even for Judaistic thoughts of it, even if Jeremiah and Isaiah were truly religious and did worship the same God we do. We come to Christ for a definition because he is the author of Christianity which to us is the very highest type of religion that the world knows. We shall find that Jesus' definition of it, is not so profound as some have thought. The world has made religion far more difficult to perceive and experience than Jesus ever did. Some have made it quite unnatural to man, far beyond his normal experience, intricate and complex. Others have defined it in terms of metaphysics, have wrapped it in ecclesiastical coverings and bound it with creedal red tape, so that a common humanity never surely knows when it possesses it. It is not to be confused with elaborate theological statements. One may be genuinely and sanely religious and have a very simple theology. In personal religion one may leave entirely outside of his concern, great masses of theological speculation. He need not bother about perfectly defining Deity, he may even recognize that he cannot state satisfactorily just the nature of Jesus Christ and yet he may be sure of the experience of personal religion. Happy is that person who is able to disentangle religion from speculative theology, and thrice happy is he who finds his way to the experience of this religion without |