[11] Lectures and Biographical Sketches, 1868, p. 186.



Now it would be too absurd to say that the inner experiences that
underlie such expressions of faith as this and impel the writer
to their utterance are quite unworthy to be called religious
experiences. The sort of appeal that Emersonian optimism, on the
one hand, and Buddhistic pessimism, on the other, make to the
individual and the son of response which he makes to them in his
life are in fact indistinguishable from, and in many respects
identical with, the best Christian appeal and response. We must
therefore, from the experiential point of view, call these
godless or quasi-godless creeds "religions"; and accordingly when
in our definition of religion we speak of the individual's
relation to "what he considers the divine," we must interpret the
term "divine" very broadly, as denoting any object that is god-
LIKE, whether it be a concrete deity or not. But the term
"godlike," if thus treated as a floating general quality, becomes
exceedingly vague, for many gods have flourished in religious
history, and their attributes have been discrepant enough. What
then is that essentially godlike quality--be it embodied in a
concrete deity or not--our relation to which determines our
character as religious men? It will repay us to seek some answer
to this question before we proceed farther.

For one thing, gods are conceived to be first things in the way
of being and power. They overarch and envelop, and from them
there is no escape. What relates to them is the first and last
word in the way of truth. Whatever then were most primal and