What, then, is religion? Do any of the definitions given at the beginning explain what it really is? Is it a theory of the universe, is it morality, is it future rewards and punishments? It may be all or none of these things. Is it creeds, dogmas, speculations, or theories of any kind? It is none of these things.
Religion is the recognition and cultivation of our highest emotions, of our more beautiful instincts, of all that we know is best in us.
What these emotions may be varies in each people according to their natures, their circumstances, their stage of civilisation. In the Latins some emotions predominate, in the Teutons others, in the Hindus yet others. Each race of men has its own garden wherein grow flowers that are not found elsewhere, and of these they make their faiths.
Some of these emotions I have tried to show in this book. For the Latins they are the emotions of fatherhood, of prayer, and confession, of sacrifice and atonement, of motherhood, of art and beauty, of obedience, of rule, of mercy, of forgiveness, of the resurrection of the body, of prayer for the dead, of strong self-denial and asceticism, of many others; but those, I think, are the chief.
For the Protestant, the more rigid Protestant, it is the cultivation of the emotions of force, grandeur, prayer, justice, conduct, punishment of evil, austerity, and also many others.
With the Burman Buddhist it is the recognition and cultivation of the beauties of freedom, peace, calm, rigid self-denial, charity in thought and deed to all the world, pity to animals, the existence of the soul before and after death, with no reference to any particular body. The Mahommedan has for one of his principal emotions courage in battle, and the Hindu cleanliness of body and purity of race.
These things are religions. Out of his strongest feelings has man built up his faiths.
And the creeds are but the theories of the keener intellects of the race to explain, and codify, and organise the cultivation of these feelings.
Creeds are not religions, nor are religions proved by miracle or by prophecy, by evidence, or any reasoning of any kind. The instincts are innate or do not exist at all. Like all emotions and feelings, they cannot be created or destroyed by reason.