CHAPTER XXX THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT EMIL CARL WILM, PH.D., LL.D. PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY AND EDUCATION, WELLS COLLEGE The Religious Influences of the High School, Direct and Indirect.-The formal influences affecting the religious life of the high school student group themselves naturally into two classes: (1) those directly exerted by the school itself, through the studies, the instructing staff, and the general exercises, and (2) influences from other institutional agencies, like the church and the Sunday-school, which seek to impart ethical and religious instruction and training of a specific and supplementary type. The duties of the high school, therefore, in so far as it can be said to have such duties, would seem to be: (1) to organize and to make as efficient as possible those agencies within the high school itself which may contribute to the strengthening and enrichment of the religious life of those intrusted to its care, and (2) to co-operate with institutions, like the church, the Sundayschool, Christian associations, and similar institutions, which are aiming at the same ultimate object as the school, the object at which all forms of educational endeavor must ultimately aim if they are to justify themselves the building of character. What Are Religion and Religious Education? The discussion of the relation of the high school to the religious development of its students will, I think, be comparatively fruitless without some preliminary understanding as to just what we shall mean by religion and by religious education. Most of the current discussions of the problem of religious education are thoroughly vitiated by the entire absence of any clear notions of what the discussions are about, or of what, precisely, we are trying to achieve when we are engaged in so-called religious instruction and training. The majority of writers either assume a knowledge of what is meant by religion (a matter which has taxed the best powers of expert students of the subject) or else content themselves with vague suggestions of religion as a name for morality, or as a certain conception of God and of man, and the like.1 In the spirit of the medieval monk, therefore, in Mr. Chesterton's book, and at the risk of being unceremoniously jostled by those who are anxious to get on, let us first undertake some analysis, however rough and sketchy, of that fact or form of consciousness which we call religion. Religion may be viewed, objectively, as a social fact, as a name for the church, with all its multiform activities, its doctrines, rites, and ceremonies. These, however, as is evident on a moment's reflection, do not stand by themselves; they are merely the outward forms and expressions of certain inward experiences of persons. Thus theology is but the embodiment, in systematic outward form, of the religious ideas and opinions of men given to reflection upon religious objects; religious art 1 For a typical example of this method of dealing with the topic read chap. X, Religion, in Sisson's "The Essentials of Character." and religious ceremony are the outward expressions of religious emotions; the social and philanthropic activities of the church are the organized and outward expressions of the religious impulse to service, etc. If we penetrate, therefore, beneath the external forms through which religion objectifies and expresses itself and seek for the fundamental fact of religion itself, without which religion as an institutional and social form would not exist at all, we shall come upon a characteristic state of mind, a spiritual attribute of persons, a fact of a purely psychic order. When we come to an analysis of this state of mind, we find it to be something very complex and pervasive, involving every phase of activity of man's many-sided psychical nature. Indeed, the most common error in our definitions of the religious consciousness has been that we have viewed it too narrowly, as a set of theological beliefs, or as an emotional attitude, or as a form of ethical endeavor, and the like. These views of religion do not entirely fail of their purpose; they only err in being too simple, too exclusively one-sided to express so complex and many-featured a phenomenon as religion really is. Religion is, indeed, a theology, and it involves emotional attitudes and a specific form of conduct or life. But it is not either of these things exclusively; it is all of them at once. It will be well, I think, to take a paragraph or two to make this a little clearer. Religion as a Theoretical World View.-Religion represents, in the first place, a certain Weltanschauung, a certain view of the universe which purports to be true. It is, indeed, the only philosophy of the world and of life which enjoys anything like universality. To be sure, the view of the world which it represents does not pretend to possess technical adequacy and it does not enjoy the complete sanction of the philosophers nor of the schools. That, however, detracts little from the force and the finality of its appeal to those who are its devotees. And it is a weighty recommendation of the methods of common sense and an interesting testimony to the sure-footedness of our dumbest and most inarticulate instincts that the profoundest philosophy often brings us back to the fundamental things of religion. For, as Bacon said, "it is true that a little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion." As an Ethical Imperative. But what is true of any genuine philosophy of life vitally held, that it is no mere theoretic structure but cuts deeply into the conduct of life, that it is no set of views merely, held, as it were, in the hand, but is enacted and lived, is pre-eminently true of religion. While it is, indeed, on one of its sides, a theory of life, it is also a force in life. Its solution of the world problem is not merely theoretical, it is also practical. The riddle of the universe is for it not only an intellectual problem, an enigma to be resolved by reason, it is just as much a problem of conduct, an object of the will. Religion is always more than speculative; it is remedial as well. It is an ethical imperative, a call to duty, a programme of salvation. The universal association of morality with religion, from the ancient Hebrews, who ascribed the origin of the moral law directly to the will of God, to Kant, who defined religion. outrightly as morality conceived as divine command, and Wordsworth, who apostrophized duty as the "stern 1 Cf. E. C. Wilm, "The Problem of Religion," especially chaps. II and VIII. daughter of the voice of God," bears witness to the close connection which exists between religion and the concepts and practices of morality. Indeed, so conspicuous are the ethical features of religion that the description of religion given by St. James, however unsatisfactory it might prove to the psychological analyst, remains for many the most satisfactory and final view of religion's true nature: "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and the widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world." Its Imaginative Redundancy.-There is still a third aspect of religion which is so conspicuous as to be noticeable even in the most cursory examination of it. Mr. G. Lowes Dickinson has suggested this aspect in his view of religion as any attitude toward the universe which is "greatly and imaginatively conceived."`1 Whether its imaginative character proves to be a truly differentiating characteristic of religion or not, there can be no question that religion has always contained important imaginative and poetic elements. And the reason for this is not far to seek. Man's life is set in the midst of a universe incomparably grand and unfathomable. His every problem ends in a mystery. As a consequence of his intellectual and physical impotence, his position in the universe is one of great helplessness. Beset on every side by forces and potencies which he can neither comprehend nor control, the central problem of his life becomes one of salvation, the problem of escaping from the universal burden-a burden of ignorance, of fate, of sin. Small wonder, then, that man should construct 1" Religion, A Criticism and a Forecast," chap. III. |