ious mind is an equally complex and deep-rooted
inheritance and can best be approached by a consideration of the bases
of religion.

_Certain Qualities Common to All Religions_

We are but pilgrims down roads which space and time supply; we cannot
account for ourselves in terms of what we know to be less than
ourselves, nor can we face the shadow which falls deeply across the end
of our way without dreaming, at least, of that which lies beyond.
Whence? Whither? and Why? are insurgent questions; they are voices out
of the depths. A very great development of intelligence was demanded
before such questions really took definite shape, but they are implicit
in even the most rudimentary forms of religion, nor do we outgrow them
through any achievement of Science or development of Philosophy. They
become thereby, if anything, more insistent. Our widening horizons of
knowledge are always swept by a vaster circumference of mystery into
which faith must write a meaning and beyond which faith must discern a
destiny.

Religion begins, therefore, in our need so to interpret the power
manifest in the universe[1] as to come into some satisfying relationship
therewith. It goes on to supply an answer to the dominant
questions--Whence? Whither? Why? It fulfills itself in worship and
communion with what is worshipped. Such worship has addressed itself to
vast ranges of objects, fulfilled itself in an almost unbelievable
variety of rites. And yet in every kind of worship there has been some
aspiration toward an ideal excellence and some endeavour, moreover, of
those who worship to come into a real relation with what is worshipped.
It would need a detailed treatment, here impossible, to back up so
general a statement with the facts which prove it, but the facts are
beyond dispute. It would be equally difficult to analyze the elements in
human nature which lead us to seek such communion. The essential
loneliness of the soul, our sense of divided and warring powers and the
general emotional instability of personality without fitting objects of
faith and devotion, all contribute to the incurable religiosity of human
nature.

[Footnote 1: I have taken as a working definition of Religion a phrase
quoted by Ward Fowler in the introduction to his Gifford Lectures on
"The Religious Experience of the Roman People." "Religion is the
effective desire to be in right relationship to the power manifesting
itself in the Universe." This is only a fo