Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/118

 moon, or whatever else may strike them as remarkable in material nature. We have besides, the phenomenon of a very “advanced” form of culture which denies the Being of God altogether, at the same time denying that religion is the truest expression of the Spirit. Thinkers of this extreme sort have even seriously maintained that priests, in instilling a religion into men, are no better than deceivers, their sole object being to make men subject to themselves.

A further attempt which has been made to prove the necessity of religion does not get beyond establishing an external conditional necessity, in which religion is made a means, and something practised with a definite end in view. But religion is thereby degraded to the condition of something contingent, which has not value on its own account, but may either be discarded by me or made use of by me for some definite purpose. The true view, which represents the real state of the case and the false one, are here very close together, and the obliquity or error in the latter appears to be only a slight displacement, so to speak, of the former.

Both in ancient and modern times you find the idea given expression to, that a town, state, family, or individual has been doomed to destruction because they despised the gods; that adoration of the gods, on the other hand, and reverence towards them preserve states, and make them prosperous; and that the happiness and advancement of individuals are furthered by their being religious.

Undoubtedly it is only when religion is made the foundation that the practice of righteousness attains stability, and that the fulfilment of duty is secured. It is in religion that what is deepest in man, the conscience, first feels that it lies under an absolute obligation, and has the certain knowledge of this obligation; therefore the State must rest on religion, for it is in religion we first have any absolute certainty and security as regards the dispositions of men, and duties they owe to