. Arnold, when he says that by religion he always understands
Christianity, narrows the word as much as he would have narrowed the
word "patriotism" had he defined it to mean a devotion to the interests
of England. I think the popular instinct, though of course quite unable
to construct a definition of religion, is in its vague way very well
aware of the peculiar nature of religious thought and feeling. The
popular instinct would certainly never confound religion with philosophy
on the one hand, nor, on the other, unless excited to opposition, would
it be likely to refuse the name of religion to another worship, such as
Mahometanism, for instance.

According to the popular instinct, then, which on a subject of this kind
appears the safest of all guides, a religion involves first a belief and
next a public practice. The nature of the belief is in these days wholly
peculiar to religion; in other times it was not so, because then people
believed other things much in the same way. But in these days the test
of religious belief is that it should make men accept as certain truth
what they would disbelieve on any other authority. For example, a true
Roman Catholic believes that the consecrated host is the body of Christ,
and so long as he lives in the purely religious spirit he continues to
believe this; but so soon as the power of his religious sentiment
declines he ceases to believe it, and the wafer appears to him a wafer,
and no more. And so amongst Protestants the truly religious believe many
things which no person not being under the authority of religion could
by any effort bring himself to believe. It is easy, for example, to
believe that Joshua arrested the sun's apparent motion, so long as the
religious authority of the Bible remains perfectly intact; but no sooner
does the reader become critical than the miracle is disbelieved. In all
ages, and in all countries, religions have narrated marvellous things,
and the people have always affirmed that not to believe these narratives
constituted the absence of religion, or what they called atheism. They
have equally, in all ages and countries, held the public act of
participation in religious worship to be an essential part of what they
called religion. They do not admit the sufficiency of secret prayer.

Can these popular instincts help us to a definition? They may help us at
least to mark the dividing line between religion and morality, between
religion and philosophy. No