Emotional Religion

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 15, 1875

Emotional Religion.

Genuine religion is not so much a matter of feeling as of principle. It begins in right thinking, develops itself in right acting, and ends in a condition of love to God and good will toward men. The attempt to violate this order and to jump at once into the enjoyment of results which are only to be reached by long and patient labor, is a mistake which causes most of the discredit into which religion and its advocates have fallen with the world at large. The transient excitement produced by singing, praying, and impassioned exhorting, which multitudes esteem the chief element of religious experience, is found in practice to be of so little avail in making men honest and good that it has ceased to command the respect of sensible people, and the real article of which it is a counterfeit comes to be despised along with it.

Whatever gushing orators and sensational preachers may say to the contrary, it is no more possible, in the ordinary course of things, to pass directly from a state of sinfulness into a truly religious state than it is for a confirmed invalid to be at once restored to health. There have, it is true, been cases of miraculous spiritual, as of miraculous corporeal, healing, but they do not occur often. The only means that can be relied on, as a rule, to effect a radical and permanent cure requires time for its application. The spiritual teacher who promises instant salvation to his followers is as much of a quack as the self-styled physician who advertises to cure diseases by simply giving his pills, without change of diet or interference with business. Both may succeed in giving temporary relief; but both in the end are sure to leave their patients worse off than they found them.

In religion, as in the management of bodily health, the one great point to be steadily kept in view is abstinence from sin. Every physician of experience knows that if men would only refrain from improper eating, drinking, and exposure, nine-tenths of the sickness of the world would immediately cease; and the remaining tenth would not be slow in passing away likewise. The science of medicine is every day becoming less one of drug-giving and more one of regimen. To find out the cause of sickness and put a stop to it, is seen to be a much more sensible proceeding than to let the cause go on working, and only try to remedy its effects. When the teachers of religion come to the same conclusion, they will have reason to expect success in their efforts to reform the world, and not before.

Christianity, the prevailing religion of this country, is, as we all know, based upon Judaism. Its founder emphatically declared that he did not come to abrogate the Jewish law, but to explain and amplify it. The basis of that law is the ten commandments, which both Jew and Christian accept as still binding, and which, indeed, are an integral portion of every religion in the world. Of these ten commandments, all but one point out sins which are not to be committed, without saying anything of church-going, revivals, prayer-meetings, or hearing sermons. We are commanded not to worship other than the one true God, not to take his name in vain, not to labor on the Sabbath day, not to steal, nor tell lies, nor murder, nor commit adultery, and, finally, not to cherish even the desire of doing such things. It requires no argument to show that if men would only faithfully follow these few simple precepts, there would be an end of sin, and earth would become like Heaven.

The difficulty is that, simple as these laws appear to be, they are amazingly hard to obey in practical life, and all sorts of expedients have been invented to get around them. In devising these expedients none have been more zealous than the ministers of religion themselves. One fiction which they have popularized is that it is impossible to obey the commandments, and that, therefore, obedience is not necessary. As if God would trifle with his creatures by enjoining upon them an impossibility! Another fiction is that membership in certain ecclesiastical organizations is a protection against the consequences of disobedience—a kind of insurance policy, as it were, against hell fire. Another is, that no matter what sins we commit, Jesus Christ has suffered our punishment for us, and therefore we shall escape. To come fairly and squarely out with the scriptural doctrine, “The soul that sinneth, it shall die,” is the last thing that seems to be thought of.

Of course it has been found that none of these devices are successful in producing that peace and joy and contentment which are the fruits of a truly religious life, and further measures have had to be resorted to to supply the deficiency. To continue the parallel of the body and the soul, the glow of health being wanting, its absence has been supplied by stimulants; just as the glutton takes brandy to relieve his indigestion, or as opium is administered to destroy the sense of pain. It is not too much to say that nine-tenths of the existing machinery of religion has had its origin in the effort to produce a semblance of genuine fervor in breasts which are so filled with natural bad passions that there is no room for heavenly affections. The corporeal titillation of exquisite music and architecture, the thrill of oratory, and the rousing fervor of congregational singing, are made to do duty for the nobler and higher earnestness that results from a life of strict obedience to the law of God. And the consequence is that, with millions, religion, as we have said, has come to be regarded as an affair of the emotions alone, without any necessary connection with honesty and virtue. It is seen that there is no incompatibility between the most fervid religious experiences and thorough scoundrelism in every-day life. Eminent church-going Christians and eloquent talkers about their love to Jesus, their sweet outpourings of soul, and their ecstatic enjoyment of heavenly contemplation, are found to be none the less corrupt politicians, dishonest merchants, tricky lawyers, and bad husbands, fathers, and citizens generally. If abstinence from sin, in obedience to the divine laws, were made, as it ought to be, the chief and prominent element of religious life, all this would be avoided. If the world saw that the professors and ministers of religion were careful not to lie, defraud, indulge in revenge and adultery, nor in any way to wrong their fellow-men, they would respect them accordingly; and their display of religious emotion, instead of exciting contempt, as it now too often does, would lead to a desire to share in its enjoyment.—Sel.