What is religion? It has been made identical with the membership of this and that organization which has arrogated to itself, often in the teeth of all evidence, the exclusive title of "the Church." Religion is not church membership. The meek, the just, the pious, the devout, as William Penn said, are all the children of the kingdom of heaven, and they shall meet and recognize each other when their various marks and liveries are taken off. This is the doctrine alike of St. Peter, of St. Paul and of St. John. And religion has been identified with the intellectual acceptance or profession of a set of dogmas. But it is not this; for the doctrines of Christianity, as laid down by Christ, were few, broad and in their main facts utterly simple, so that, as Isaiah says, a child, or a wayfaring man, or a fool need not err therein. All the elaborations of metaphysical definition, exorbitant inferences, and curiously articulated creeds which have been based on the simplicity which is in Christ Jesus, may have been safeguards against subtle heresies, but, as intellectual opinions merely, have in them no power of salvation.
And religion has been identified with rites, forms, ceremonies, feasts, fasts, new moons, sacraments, sacrifices, and so forth. But religion is not dependent on outward observances. On the contrary, prophets and apostles alike show the utter fatuity of supposing that these things can take the place of righteousness and true godliness; and the utter nullity and invalidity of every form of outward observance in itself. They echo in page after page the sentiment of Hosea, of which Christ bade the Pharisee go and learn the meaning: "I will have mercy and not sacrifice." "Religion" means as the great thinker Benjamin Whichcot said, "a good mind and a good life." This, in essence, is its true and only meaning. How, then, can it be, or ever have been, otherwise than one infinite blessing to mankind?— , in McClure's Magazine for April.
