THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF RELIGION Just as the common assumption that religion, in general, sprang from some single element (e.g., fear, ghosts, sex, or magic), is disproved by the fact that early religion is essentially a practical, social, religious system, so the higher religions, in turn, are not based upon the utterances and acts of a single Founder, but are organic systematic bodies of ideas. With these the test of truth is not only the ordinary social effectiveness of the religion, but the value of the theological and philosophical developments which sooner or later are required among peoples at a higher stage of mental growth. The distinction which students of religion are obliged to draw between magic and religion reflects the fact that religious beliefs and practices are found to differ markedly in their social, ethical or logical value. But while any harmful social or ethical consequences (e.g., human sacrifice) sooner or later do not fail to arouse the reformer, questions of intellectual value and the conflict between religious ideas and ordinary contempo rary knowledge are much more obscure.
Religion typically implies certain ideas of the nature of man and the universe which are commonly of the utmost importance for man's knowledge of the world in which he lives. Both the pre-existence of Christ and his profound "cosmic" significance (cf. Rom. viii. 19 sqq., Col. i.) are not without parallels as far back as the Pharaohs of Egypt. Gods were often believed to be immanent in nature or in natural processes; or the universe was something living; it was a man, or man in some sense partook of the essence of the universe. If the moralist would enjoin man to live in harmony with the order that rules in the universe, the mystic would feel his oneness with it, or the devotee might seek union with its God. The attempt to frame a "rational" description of the universe may perhaps be traced back to the noteworthy conception of a universal cosmic "order" (rita) under the guardianship of the ethical god Varuna. (See HEBREW RELIGION, sec. 4.) Later there was a differentiation, and while Zoroastrianism develops the idea of ethical order, also under an ethical god (Ahura-Mazda), a naturalistic treatment arose in the West in Ionia. Indian thought, on the other hand, emphasized the essen tial unreality of the world, and by a tremendous leap, identified the ultimate principle of the individual with that of the universe.
Of course, men often enough were not, and are not, conscious of the real problems which religious experience brings. Religion might give a man all the knowledge of the universe that he wanted ; it might also deprecate curiosity concerning God's handi work. If intense religious experience made the world seem tran sitory and unreal, the decisive conviction of its reality subordi nated all deeper religious enquiry to the current knowledge. When Christianity arose there was abundant speculation of a theological, philosophical, and pseudo-scientific character, and had the idea of Christ as an immanent cosmic principle been devel oped, there would have been, instead of a theology, virtually a theory of the universe. (Cf. MANICHAEISM.) Characteristic of the age were the catastrophic anticipations and forebodings. A changed world was demanded, or was believed to be imminent. Overwhelming spiritual experiences imply or require a sphere other than that of earthly life. Religion demands a sphere of its own, or it makes one. Renunciation and seclusion from the world of active life were no novelty—Buddhism and Taoism had their monks; but religion is also dominating and imperialist, and the Old Testament illustrates the extremes of submission, passivity, and self-centredness, and the zeal of a religion proud of its strength and its efficiency and of its sig nificance for the world at large. Christianity, like Judaism, ac cepted the world. God moulded history for Israel ; "righteousness" and "salvation" had material implications even as "sin" meant misfortune and unhappy conditions, the fruit of men's wrong doing. Christianity, like Judaism, was for active practical use; and the Jesus of the Gospels, the reverse of an ecstatic or unstable character, even gives point to his teaching by utilizing examples of successful capacity (the parable of the Talents and of lack of preparation for war [Luke xiv. 31]). Neither the life after death (cf. the "psychic" body of I Cor. xv. 44), nor the conditions after an anticipated cataclysm could be regarded as entirely other than what earthly experience could suggest, even as the earlier Messianic expectations (in Is. xi. 4-6) are not of a sinless age, but of an age of absolute justice and peace.