Morality as a Religion | Page 5

saying of the fourth
century writer, Augustine of Hippo, here are a few words of Victor
Hugo, spoken in the French Parliament of the forties: "Dieu se retrouve
à la fin de tout".
Before leaving this point, it would be well to complete the argument by
distinctly stating that, as morality is possible without religion,
religion--or rather we should call it religiosity--is possible without
morality. This is a matter of very great importance, and what has been
asserted will help us to understand the curious phenomena one meets

with in all periods of the world's history--men and women, apparently
of undeniable religious instincts, exhibiting a most imperfect
appreciation of the far more weighty matters concerned with moral
conduct. I am not speaking of downright hypocrites who make religion
merely a cloak for the realisation of rascally designs. I speak rather of
such individuals, who, while betraying a marked religious fervour,
showing itself in assiduous attention at church services, proselytising,
and religious propaganda generally, manifest on the other hand little or
no delicacy or sensitiveness of conscience on purely ethical matters.
Take for example such men as Torquemada and the inquisitors, or
Calvin amongst the Protestants; take the orgies of sensuality which
were the necessary accompaniment of much religious worship in Pagan
times, and, if we may believe travellers, are not wholly dissociated with
popular religion in India and China to-day. Or, again, take such a case
as that of the directors of the Liberator Building Society, men whose
prospectuses, annual reports, and even announcements of dividends,
were saturated with the unction of religious fervour. Or, take the
tradesman who may be a churchwarden or deacon at his church or
chapel, but exhibits no scruples whatever in employing false weights,
and, worst of all, in adulterating human food. An incalculable amount
of this sort of thing goes on, and, whether it be accurate or not I cannot
say, it is often ascribed to small dealers in small towns and villages,
"pillars of the church," as a rule, which they may happen to attend.
Now, in all these cases there is no need to suppose conscious hypocrisy.
Unconscious, possibly; but, though the heart of man be inscrutable, we
need not necessarily believe that such phenomena are open evidence of
wilful self-deceit. The far truer explanation is, that religious emotion is
one thing and moral emotion quite another. The late chairman of the
Liberator Building Company, I can well conceive, was a fervent and
devoted adherent of his sect, and was not consciously insincere, when,
in paying dividends out of capital, he ascribed his prosperity to the
unique care of a heavenly providence which especially occupied itself
about all he personally undertook. The rascality of Saturday was
entirely forgotten on Sunday, when, with bowed head, he recited his
metaphysical creed or received the parting blessing. The Sunday
service, the surpliced choir, those melting hymns, the roll of the organ's

mysterious tones throughout the holy edifice, the peculiar sense of
spiritual well-being and prosperity which it all combined to produce
was probably a joy of his life, and by no means the meanest. The
mischief was that he had no moral sense, and the word honesty and
duty connoted nothing real to his mis-shapen mind. He was a morally
deficient being.
Now, the ethical Church has come for this great purpose, to make us
see the repulsiveness of a religion of that kind, to assure every man that
no religious services, any more than the eager subscription of
antiquated formularies, constitute the essence of religion. That is built
on the moral law, and unless it come as the crown and glory of a life of
duty, then that religion is a shameful thing, the sacrilegious degradation
of the highest and holiest thing on earth. It has come, this ethical
Church, to reinforce the wholly forgotten teaching of the Hebrew
prophets of the utter emptiness of all religion devoid of moral life, the
vanity of sacrifices, oblations and rites, the hollowness of formularies,
creeds and confessions, the indispensable necessity of an ethical basis
for all religious belief and practice. "What more," asks Micah, "doth the
Lord require of thee than to do justice, love mercy, and to walk humbly
with thy God?"
It has come also to indicate the true relations between ethics and
religion. Ethics are truly the basis on which religion is built, but when
once the sacred edifice is fully raised, a beautiful reaction is set up (at
least in the ideal good life), and religion becomes one of the strongest
incentives to a dutiful and virtuous life. This is the explanation of the
truly ideal lives lived by men and women of deep personal religion, in
all sects and creeds, European and Asiatic. This, too, is the justification
of that oft-repeated and profoundly