Fontenelle's sense, believe in him. But I prefer to use the term
"belief" more strictly, to connote such assent as expresses itself, not
in a deliberate judgment made conformable to one's intellectual
conscience, but in fear, love, and purpose, in habitual imagery, in any
attitude or activity that spontaneously and freely presupposes the object
with which it deals.

By conceiving religion as belief we may understand not only its air of
certainty, but also the variety of its forms and agencies. Belief sits
at the centre of life and qualifies all its manifestations. Hence the
futility of attempting to associate religion exclusively with any single
function of man. The guises in which religious belief may appear are as
multiform as human nature, and will vary with every shading of mood and
temperament. Its central objects may be thought, imagined, or dealt
with--in short, responded to in all the divers ways, internal and overt,
that the powers and occasions of life define.

This will suffice, I trust, to lay the general topic of religion before
us. I shall employ the terms and phrases which I have formulated as a
{218} working definition: _Religion is belief on the part of individuals
or communities concerning the final or overruling control of their
interests_.[2] I propose from this point to keep in the forefront of the
discussion the standards whereby religion is to be estimated, and
approved or condemned. On what grounds may a religion be criticised?
What would constitute the proof of an absolute religion? History is
strewn with discredited religions; men began to quarrel over religion so
soon as they had any; and it is customary for every religious devotee to
believe jealously and exclusively. There can be no doubt, then, that
religion is subject to justification; it remains to distinguish the tests
which may with propriety be applied, and in particular to isolate and
emphasize the moral test.

II

In the first place, let me mention briefly a test which it is customary
to apply, but which is not so much an estimate as it is a measure. I
refer to the various respects in which an individual or community may be
said to be _more_ or _less_ religious. Thus, for example, certain
religious phenomena surpass others in acuteness or intensity. This is
peculiarly true of the phenomena manifested in conversion and in
revivals. In this respect the mysteries of the ancients exceeded {219}
their regular public w