some of you personal religion, thus nakedly considered, will no
doubt seem too incomplete a thing to wear the general name. "It
is a part of religion," you will say, "but only its unorganized
rudiment; if we are to name it by itself, we had better call it
man's conscience or morality than his religion. The name
'religion' should be reserved for the fully organized system of
feeling, thought, and institution, for the Church, in short, of
which this personal religion, so called, is but a fractional
element."

But if you say this, it will only show the more plainly how much
the question of definition tends to become a dispute about names.

Rather than prolong such a dispute, I am willing to accept almost
any name for the personal religion of which I propose to treat.
Call it conscience or morality, if you yourselves prefer, and not
religion--under either name it will be equally worthy of our
study. As for myself, I think it will prove to contain some
elements which morality pure and simple does not contain, and
these elements I shall soon seek to point out; so I will myself
continue to apply the word "religion" to it; and in the last
lecture of all, I will bring in the theologies and the
ecclesiasticisms, and say something of its relation to them.

In one sense at least the personal religion will prove itself
more fundamental than either theology or ecclesiasticism.
Churches, when once established, live at second-hand upon
tradition; but the FOUNDERS of every church owed their power
originally to the fact of their direct personal communion with
the divine. Not only the superhuman founders, the Christ, the