Religion and Literature

RELIGION AND LITERATURE.

1. Common Origen of Religion and Literature.

Religion and literature spring from the same fundamental sources. Religion is the relation which man bears to ultimate Being. It is concerned with the substance which lies behind phenomena, and also with the duty which man owes to this Being, universal and eternal. It is concerned, too, with the questions what, whence, whither. Literature, in and its final analysis, represents the same fundamental relationship: it seeks to explain, to justify, to reconcile, to interpret, and even to comfort and to console. The Homeric poems are pervaded with the religious atmosphere of wonder, of obedience to the eternal, and of the recognition of the interest of the gods in human affairs. A significant place is held by religion in Greek tragedy. A Divine Providence, the eternity, universality, and immutability of law, the inevitableness of penalty, and the assurance of reward represent great forces in the three chief Greek tragedians. Less impressively, yet with significance, the poems of Vergil are bathed in the air of religious mystery and submission. The great work of Lucretius, De rerum natura, is, of course, an expression of the human mind in its attempt to penetrate the mysteries of being. The mythology, too, of the non-Christian nations of the north, as well as the literature of the medieval peoples, is concerned with the existence and the work of the gods. In Scandinavian mythology, literature and religion are in no small degree united.

2. Their Common Appeal to Life.

Not only do religion and literature spring from the same fundamental sources, they also are formed by the same forces. They both make a constant appeal to life. They assume the presence and orderly use of the reason; they accept the strength of the human emotions of love, fear, curiosity, reverence,—and they both presume and accept the categorical imperative of the conscience and the freedom and force of the will of man. Both gain in dominance, prestige, and usefulness as they are the more intimately related to life. The great themes of religion and literature are similar and are vital: sin, its origin, penalties, and deliverance therefrom; love—the passion, and the will—its place and its limitations; righteousness, and the relation of men to each other. In illustration of the identities of the themes of religion and literature, one may refer to Dante's "Divine Comedy," which is concerned with the passing from and through Hell, where live those who knew not Christ in the earthly life, or, if they knew him, refused to obey, through Purgatory, where dwell those whose sins are not mortal, and into the Paradise where dwell the righteous in an eternity of light and of love. The great poem of the Middle Ages is at once great literature and a certain type of religion. French literature is also pervaded by the religious atmosphere. The religious element in the system of Descartes—both philosophy in literature and literature in philosophy—and of his followers is marked, and from them later French literature drew religion and inspiration. This inspiration, be it said, was both emotional and intellectual. The whole field of modern fiction abounds in examples of the connection between literature and religion; Hawthorne significantly represents the more modern unity in America of the two forces, and among all his works The Scarlet Letter and The Marble Faun are in this respect most notable. In English fiction George Eliot exemplifies this unity, and of her works Adam Bede is an impressive illustration.

3. Similarity in Methods

Religion and literature, moreover, adopt methods not dissimilar. They stand for the value of the imagination; they represent the artistic, rather than the scientific, methods of interpreting life and phenomena. If theology, which is the science of religion, lends itself to definition and to rational processes largely, religion belongs to the realm of the sentiments and sensibilities—the heart, the conscience, and the will. Literature, too, likewise declines to enter the realm of the formal definition; it is the product of the imagination, and to the imagination it makes its primary appeal, especially in poetry and, to some extent, in noble prose composition. Neither argues or 459dogmatizes; both intimate, suggest, and seek to interpret; neither holds definite and precise intellectual judgments regarding things eternal, universal, or divine, but each possesses general beliefs and assurances respecting the divine and the eternal. Neither has a system, a scheme, but each has an intellectual interpretativeness and emotional sympathy with the personal in life and in being.

4. Literature's Indebtedness to Religion.

Religion gives to literature, moreover, vast and rich materials. Its sacred books themselves constitute great literatures and also furnish materials for great literature. The translation of the Bible into Gothic by Ulphilas not only preserved the Bible, but also helped to create and to perpetuate literature. Luther's translation of the Bible and the King James' Version are not only themselves great literatures, but also have helped to form great literatures in modern life. German and English speech, as well as letters, have been made more pure, more intellectual, and more inspiring by these great translations. It may be also added that the sermons of Robert South and of Isaac Barrow (qq.v.) are themselves worthy pieces of literature and might be compared with Burke's Orations. It is also to be remembered that the institutions of religion, as the monasteries and cathedral chapterhouses, were, for a thousand years, the custodians of the most precious treasures of literature. The medieval period was dark and damaging to humanity's highest interests. In times of war not only are laws silent, but also literature. It was the monks who preserved the manuscripts of ancient Greece and of Rome, copying and re-copying and commenting from the year 500 till the invention of printing. As the priests were astronomers, not only in Europe, but also in India, in order to fix and to preserve the feast and other holy days, so the monks of the Middle Ages in Europe, if not literary men themselves, were the guardians of the holy lamp of letters.

5. Illustrations; Pope, Goethe.

The religion which has made the strongest appeal to English and German literature in the last two centuries has been of two types: first, the universal or natural, and, second, the distinctively Christian; and the poetry to which the appeal has been chiefly addressed has given back a noble response. In illustration of the universal type, the religion which relates itself to literature, one selects three poets, Pope, Goethe, and Wordsworth. The "Universal Prayer" of Pope, a famous passage in "Faust," and the "Ode to Immortality" are the most representative of all passages of the three. Pope's "Universal Prayer," dedicated to Deo Optimo Maximo, declares in its first two verses:

'Thou Great First Cause, least understood! Who all my sense confined To know but this, that thou art good,  And that myself am blind;

Yet gave me in this dark estate,  To see the good from ill:  And binding nature fast in fate  Left free the human will."

And closes with the lines:

"To Thee, whose temple is all space,  Whose altar, earth, sea, skies,  One chorus let all being raise;  All nature's incense rise!"

Between these two sets of verses are found petitions of a distinctive Christian character, as—

"Teach me to feel another's wo,  To hide the fault I see;  That mercy I to others show,  That mercy show to me."1919Pope's Works, ii. 463–464.

The same type in essence, although still more general, is found in Faust. In a passage which is supposed, by some, to represent Goethe's own ideas of religion, Faust says:

"The All-enfolding,  The All-upholding,  Folds and upholds he not  Thee, me, Himself?  Arches not there the sky above us?  Lies not beneath us, firm, the earth?  And rise not, on us shining,  Friendly, the everlasting stars?  Look I not, eye to eye, on thee,  And feel'st not, thronging  To head and heart, the force,  Still weaving its eternal secret,  Invisible, visible, round thy life?  Vast as it is, fill with that force thy heart,  And when thou in the feeling wholly blessed art,  Call it, then, what thou wilt,—  Call it Bliss! Heart! Love! God!  I have no name to give it!  Feeling is all in all:  The Name is sound and smoke,  Obscuring Heaven's clear glow."2020Taylor's translation of Goethe's "Faust," vol. i., scene XVI., pp. 221–222.

6. Wordsworth.

With greater eloquence and definiteness, a similar lesson is taught by Wordsworth. The teaching has reference to the immanence of divinity and also to the pre-existence of the soul.

"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:  The Soul that riseth with us, our life's Star,  Hath had elsewhere its setting,  And cometh from afar:  Not in entire forgetfulness,  And not in utter nakedness,  But training clouds of glory do we come  From God, who is our home:  Heaven lies about us in our infancy!  Shades of the prison-house begin to close  Upon the growing Boy,  But He beholds the light, and whence it flows  He sees it in his joy;  The Youth, who daily farther from the east  Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,  And by the vision splendid  Is on his way attended;  At length the Man perceives it die away,  And fade into the light of common day."

"Those first affections,  Those shadowy recollections,  Which, be they what they may,  Are yet the fountain light of all our day,  Are yet a master light of all our seeing;  Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make  Our noisy years seem moments in the being  Of the eternal silence: truths that wake,  To perish never;  Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavor,  Nor Man nor Boy,  Nor all that is at enmity with joy, 460  Can utterly abolish or destroy!  Hence in a season of calm weather  Though inland far we be.  Our souls have sight of that immortal sea  Which brought us hither.  Can in a moment travel thither.  And see the Children sport upon the shore,  And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore."2121Wordsworth "Ode to Immortality."

7. Browning.

The teaching of the greatest poets of the last fifty years gives forth lessons even more religious, and also more impressively Christian. The poems of Browning embody a religion more Christian .than is found in either Wordsworth or Pope. That God is a Divine Father, almighty and loving, and that Jesus Christ, his Son, is our Lord, are doctrines which embody both the statement and the atmosphere of Robert Browning. The Pontiff says in "The Pope" in an address made to God:

"O Thou,—as represented here to me  In such conception as my soul allows.—  Under Thy measureless, my atom width!  Our known unknown, our God revealed to man.  Existent somewhere, somehow, as a whole;  Here, as a whole proportioned to our sense.—  There (which is nowhere, speech must babble thus!),  In the absolute immensity, the whole  Appreciable solely by Thyself.—  Here, by the little mind of man, reduced  To littleness that suits his faculty,  In the degree appreciable too."2222The Ring and the Book, Crowell's ed. "The Pope," x. 1303–18.

In other passages Browning speaks of "a need, a trust, a yearning after God." The air is called "the clear, pure breath of God that loveth us." (Crowell's ed., vii. 203.)

The divinity of Christ is also a doctrine taught by Browning. In "Christmas Eve" Christ stands forth as—

"He who trod,  Very man and very God.  This earth in weakness, shame, and pain;"2323Christmas Eve, ib., iv. 286–327. The whole poem is full of the divinity of Christ.

In the coordinate poem of "Easter" Christ is likewise spoken of as "Thou Love of God." In other passages, too, is found a similar teaching.

" Believe in Me,  Who lived and died, yet essentially  Am Lord of Life."2424The Ring and the Book, Crowell's ed. "The Pope," x. 1303–18.

"The very God! think, Abib; dost thou think?  So, the All-Great, were the All-Loving, too."2525Christmas Eve, ib., iv. 286–327. The whole poem is full of the divinity of Christ.

"And thou must love Me, who have died for thee."2626An Epistle of Karshish, ib., v. 10–22, 305–307, 311.

"Call Christ, then, the illimitable God."2727A Death in the Desert, ib. v. 686.

"He, the Truth, is, too, the Word."2828The Ring and the Book; "The Pope," x. 375–376, ib., vii. 175.

"The Great Word which makes all things new."2929Dramatic Lyrics; "By the Fireside," xxvii. ib., iv. 131.

"The Star which chose to stoop and stay for us." "That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows, Or decomposes but to recompose. Become my universe that feels and knows."3030Dramatis Personæ; "Epilogue, Third Speaker," xii., ib., v. 280.

8. Tennyson.

These quotations might be continued, but they are sufficient to prove the distinctive Christian message of one of the greatest of poets. Tennyson is not so definite in his teaching of Christianity as Browning.³¹³¹E. Berdoe, Browning and the Christian Faith, pp. 42, 43, 45 (London, 1898). But Tennyson's greatest poems contain many passages which embody most direct Christian lessons, expressing as well, with an impressiveness which no other poet has ever attained, the lesson of the soul's immortality. Tennyson is; above all, the apostle of the immortal life. The argument for the life immortal, if an argument it can be called, arises from the infinity and the eternity of love, and also from the fact that even on the evolutionary hypothesis man is made by God. The essence of the creation is personal. God is immanent, not only in man, but in the universe. The union of all men in God creates brotherhood, and this union, also, evolves into righteousness and love. God is immortal love; God is also immortal life, and immortal life and immortal love belong to those who are in God. The evolutionary hypothesis was declared, and had come to be generally accepted in Tennyson's life-time. The last poems indicate his acceptance of evolution. His belief was that evolution would carry man, through God, unto perfection. He declares "Hallelujah to the Maker. It is finished. Man is made." Near his death he wrote, in "God and the Universe," "The face of death is toward the Sun of Life—his truer name is "Onward."³²³²S. A. Brooke, Tennyson: his Art and Relation to Modern Life, p. 30 (New York, 1894).

In these illustrations of the relation of religion and literature, no reference has been made to either Shakespeare or Milton. The reason is that in the older and greater poet, almost no mention is made of religion. That Shakespeare was, to a certain degree, impressed by the fundamental truths which constitute religion, there can be no doubt, but also it is clear that his great inspiration he drew from human, and not from divine, relationships. At the opposite extreme stands John Milton, who was far more a theologian than a religious poet. If Shakespeare represents the inspiration arising from human relationships, John Milton represents inspiration drawn from those dogmatic formulas which represent the skeleton, but not the life, of the Christian system.

It is apparently singular that the larger share of the illustrations used to present the relgtions existing between religion and literature are drawn from poetry. The singularity is, however, only superficial. For poetry is the highest and richest form and expression of literature; it represents the highest notes of the scale of thought, feeling, and imagination. Religion is the highest type of being, for it represents the relation of man to God and of God to man. Each, therefore, rises the highest in its own scale of being; each, therefore, becomes more clearly and closely akin to the other than are the other higher forces of humanity. They are related to each other far more intimately and constantly than can any type of prose literature be related to religion, either Christian or natural.

Charles F. Thwing.

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Bibliography: W. S. Tyler, Theology of the Greek Poets, Andover, 1867; S. A. Brooke, Theology in the English Poets, Cowper, Coleridge. Wordsworth, and Burns, New York.1875, new ed., 1910; idem, Development of Theology . . . in English Poetry, 1780–1830, ib. 1893; idem, Religion in Literature and Religion in Life, ib. 1901; G. McCrie, Religion of Our Literature, London, 1875; J. C. Shairp, Culture and Religion, Edinburgh, 1878; C. J. Abbey, Religious Thought in Old English Verse, London and New York, 1892; T. W. Hunt, Ethical Teachings in Old English Literature, New York, 1892; L. Campbell, Religion in Greek Literature, London and New York, 1898; S. L. Wilson, Theology of Modern Literature. New York, 1899; W. S. Lilly, Studies in Religion and Literature, St. Louis, 1905; C. G. Shaw, Precinct of Religion in the Culture of Humanity, New York, 1908; E. G. Sihler, Testimonium animæ, New York, 1908; K. S. Guthrie, Spiritual Message of Literature, Chicago, 1909: E. M. Chapman, English Literature and Religion, 1800–1900, London, 1910.