THE EMOTIONAL IN RELIGION.
THAT there is a demand for a religion in which the emotional shall have no place, or in which it shall be reduced to a minimum, no careful observer of the facts can deny. We are living in an age of great intellectual progress. In morals, in metaphysics, as well as in mechanics, the pendulum swings from one extreme to another. Mind and matter are controlled by the same law. The equilibrium of truth is rarely reached. It is more rarely retained. The tendency of wealth and culture is to repose. Esthetics demand the even poised. The command that "all things be done decently and in order" is receiving a new interpretation. Of old it was the custom to sacrifice all things to life. The new order sacrifices life to taste. History is repeating itself. Methodism was a rebound from the dead and dry formality of the English church. From this church all feeling seemed to have been eliminated. It was ranked among the heresies. Its existence was incomprehensible, its manifestation unpardonable. Methodism in its beginning was a moral cyclone. It swayed the hearts of men as the tempest sways the grass. Multitudes were in agony. Like storm-tossed sailors, they awoke to find themselves in peril. The land was filled with wailing. Deliverance from such sorrow must result in highest joy. Jubilant song and ecstatic shout mingled with penitential cries. Their meetings were sometimes scenes of strange confusion. The emotions were uncontrollable. The sublime and the weird mingled in their devotions. The new birth was preceded by throes of agony and was succeeded by vociferous thanksgiving. Such was its beginning. But those were the days of ignorance. Such times, a charity that hopeth all things may possibly wink at, but in these days of culture is it not time to relegate the emotional in religion with the jerks, contortions, and catalepsis to the obsolete and outworn? In a word, is there a place among a cultured people for the emotional in religion? This question finds a place in the heart more frequently than on the lips of men. The demand of the age is for a religion purely intellectual. "Convince the judgment," say the critics, "and then leave men to accept Christ or to reject him." Alas! alas! for poor humanity, when its light becomes darkness and when its highest wisdom is such consummate folly. A religion without emotion! As well ask for vegetation without heat, or joy without sensation. True, indeed, religion is intellectual. Its problems and mysteries summon us to the mightiest exercise of our reasoning faculties. But it is far more than that; as the body is more than raiment, as the life is more than meat. Religion deals with undying interests. It appeals to hope and fear. It tells of reward and punishment. It is much that it convinces the judgment, it is far more that it arouses the conscience. As aforetime it brings into condemnation, and still it has its time and song of jubilee. Religion and emotion are inseparably connected. Eliminate emotion and you have nothing of religion left but an empty name. It is a soulless body, a headless trunk, a wingless bird. Religion is love, but love is emotional. It tells of danger, but fear is emotional. It leads to highest joy, but joy is emotional. Moreover, this demand made in the interest of reason is in itself unreasonable. Why demand an unemotional religion until you have succeeded in banishing emotion from the other walks and haunts of life? There are times in the life of each of us when, wholly apart from religion, our emotion has been uncontrollable. When Archimedes, in his bath, discovered the method by which he could demonstrate whether the gold in the crown of Hiero was mixed with baser metal, he was so beside himself that he ran unclothed through the streets, crying, "Eureka!" When Newton was concluding the calculations that have made his name immortal, he was so overwhelmed with emotion that he was compelled to commit the completion of his problems to other hands. Rittenhouse fainted when, at the precise moment that he had predicted, he beheld the transit of Venus; and Zeuxis is said to have died of laughter at a picture of his own creation. If, then, the emotional holds so important a place in both science and art, is it reasonable to suppose that it can be banished from religion? A simple statement of its nature will show the folly of the demand. Religion is a life. It is God manifesting himself in and through man. But this implies a union of the human with the divine. Man must touch God. The human and the divine must blend. The earthly is moulded into the image of the heavenly. The body becomes the temple, the heart the throne of God. But is this possible without emotion? Can soul blend with soul, even when both are human, without ecstasy? To state the proposition is to refute it. "These," says Robertson, "are the soul's bridal moments." Paul says the joy is "unspeakable and full of glory." The poet calls it245
"The speechless awe that dares not move,
And all the silent heaven of love."
We may rest assured that the demand for an unemotional religion is based upon a misconception of both the nature of religion, and of the nature of man. Neither on earth nor in Heaven can such a thing exist. Extravances doubtless occur. They abound in every walk in life. They may offend a cultured taste, but they are evidences of life. The religion that satisfies itself with form and ceremony may be esthetic and stately, but it is not the religion that saves the soul. It may chant artistic music in faultless accent, but it forces from no lips the glad refrain, "I will praise thee, for though thou wast angry with me, thine anger is turned away, and thou comfortest me."—Northern Christian Advocate.