y the name. For common men "religion," whatever more
special meanings it may have, signifies always a SERIOUS state of mind.
If any one phrase could gather its universal message, that phrase would
be, "All is not vanity in this Universe, whatever the appearances may
suggest." If it can stop anything, religion as commonly apprehended
can stop just such chaffing talk as Renan's. It favors gravity, not
pertness; it says "hush" to all vain chatter and smart wit.

But if hostile to light irony, religion is equally hostile to heavy
grumbling and complaint. The world appears tragic enough in some
religions, but the tragedy is realized as purging, and a way of
deliverance is held to exist. We shall see enough of the religious
melancholy in a future lecture; but melancholy, according to our
ordinary use of language, forfeits all title to be called religious
when, in Marcus Aurelius's racy words, the sufferer simply lies kicking
and screaming after the fashion of a sacrificed pig. The mood of a
Schopenhauer or a Nietzsche--and in a less degree one may sometimes say
the same of our own sad Carlyle--though often an ennobling sadness, is
almost as often only peevishness running away with the bit between its
teeth. The sallies of the two German authors remind one, half the
time, of the sick shriekings of two dying rats. They lack the
purgatorial note which religious sadness gives forth.

There must be something solemn, serious, and tender about any attitude
which we denominate religious. If glad, it must not grin or snicker;
if sad, it must not scream or curse. It is precisely as being SOLEMN
experiences that I wish to interest you in religious experiences. So I
propose--arbitrarily again, if you please--to narrow our definition
once more by saying that the word "divine," as employed therein, shall
mean for us not merely the primal and enveloping and real, for that
meaning if taken without restriction might prove too broad. The divine
shall mean for us only such a primal reality as the individual feels
impelled to respond to solemnly and gravely, and neither by a curse nor
a jest.

But solemnity, and gravity, and all such emotional attributes, admit of
various shades; and, do what we will with our defining, the truth must
at last be confronted that we are dealing with a field of experience
where there is not a single conception that can be sharply drawn. The
pretension, under such conditions, to be rigorously "scientifi