between

and Truth in

Religion.

37. Such considerations as these serve to account for the exercise and certain of the fruits of The Relation the religious imagination, and to desImagination ignate the general criterion governing its propriety. But how is one to determine the boundary between the imaginative and the cognitive? It is commonly agreed that what religion says and does is not all intended literally. But when is expression of religion only poetry and eloquence, and when is it matter of conviction? If we revert again to the cognitive aspect of religion, it is evident that there is but one test to apply: whatever either fortifies or misleads the will is literal conviction. This test cannot be applied absolutely, because it can properly be applied only to the intention of an individual experience. However I may express my religion, that which I express, is, we have seen, an expectation. The degree to which I literally mean what I say is then the degree to which it determines my expectations. Whatever adds no item to these expectations, but only recognizes and vitalizes them, is pure imagination. But it follows that it is entirely impossible from direct inspection to define any given expression of religious experience as myth, or to define the degree to which it is myth.

garded as present for practical purposes: in some inanimate object, as in the case of the fetish; in some animal species, as in the case of the totem; in some place, as in the case of the shrine; or even in some human being, as in the case of the inspired prophet and miracle worker. In more refined and highly developed religions the medium of God's presence is less specific. He is perceived with

66 -a sense sublime

Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man.”

God is here found in an interpretation of the common and the natural, rather than in any individual and peculiar embodiment. And here the poet's appreciation, if not his art, is peculiarly indispensable.

But, furthermore, his fellows are inmates of 66 the household of man "in that he knows their history. They belong to the temporal context of actions and events. Similarly, the gods must be historical. The sacred traditions or books of religion are largely occupied with this history. The more individual and anthropomorphic the gods, the more local and episodic will be the account of their affairs. In the higher religions the acts of

God are few and momentous, such as creation or special providence; or they are identical with the events of nature and human history when these are construed as divine. To find God in this latter way requires an interpretation of the course of events in terms of some moral consistency, a faith that sees some purpose in their evident destination.

at least from my point

There is still another and a more significant way in which men recognize one another: the way of address and conversation. And men have invariably held a similar intercourse with their gods. To this category belong communion and prayer, with all their varieties of expression. I have no god until I address him. This will be the most direct evidence of what is of view a social relation. There can be no general definition of the form which this address will take. There may be as many special languages, as many attitudes, and as much playfulness and subtlety of symbolism as in human intercourse. But, on the other hand, there are certain utterances that are peculiarly appropriate to religion. In so far as he regards his object as endowed with both power and goodness the worshipper will use the language of adoration; and the sense of his depend

ence will speak in terms of consecration and

thanksgiving.

"O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee:

My soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee,
In a dry and weary land, where no water is.

So have I looked upon thee in the sanctuary,

To see thy power and thy glory.

For thy loving-kindness is better than life;
My lips shall praise thee."

These are expressions of a hopeful faith; but, on the other hand, God may be addressed in terms of hatred and distrust.

"Who is most wretched in this dolorous place?

I think myself; yet I would rather be

My miserable self than He, than He

Who formed such creatures to his own disgrace.

"The vilest thing must be less vile than Thou
From whom it had its being, God and Lord!
Creator of all woe and sin! abhorred,
Malignant and implacable." 18

In either case there may be an indefinite degree of hyperbole. The language of love and hate, of confidence and despair, is not the language of description. In this train of the religious consciousness there is occasion for whatever eloquence man can feel, and whatever rhetorical luxuriance he can utter.

13 James Thomson: The City of Dreadful Night. Quoted by James, in The Will to Believe, etc., p. 45.