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The Development of Emotion in Religion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2011

James H. Leuba
James H. Leuba
Affiliation:
Bryn Mawr College
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Extract

It is held by many that religion had its origin in the emotional life, in “loving reverence,” or in fear, or in awe; and many make some particular emotion the distinguishing mark of religion. Since, indeed, religion is a part of the struggle for the preservation and perfection of life, it involves from the very beginning emotional states. But to speak of religion as originating in emotions is to assume a conception of religion which seems to me utterly unacceptable. If any sentiment or emotion, such as reverence or fear or awe, is found at the dawn of religion, it exists as part of the response, in a particular situation, to a sense of the presence of an invisible Being, upon whom one depends and with whom one desires to hold satisfactory relations. The emotion belongs to an experience involving the whole man, that is, man as a feeling, thinking, willing being.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 5 , Issue 4 , October 1912 , pp. 524 - 543
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1912

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References

1 Th. Ribot, The Psychology of the Emotions, p. 309.

2 Lord Avebury (Sir John Lubbock), The Origin of Civilization, 5th ed., 1892, p. 225.

3 R. R. Marett, in an essay entitled “Pre-Animistic Religion,” gives expression to an interesting view of the original religious emotion. “Before, or at any rate apart from, Animism, was any man subject to any experience, whether in the form of feeling, or of thought, or of both combined, that might be termed specifically ‘religious’?” His answer is affirmative; the emotion arising in the presence of the mysterious—awe—is the original religous emotion. “Of all English words, Awe is, I think, the one that expresses the fundamental religious feeling most nearly. Awe is not the same thing as ‘pure funk.’ ‘Primus in orbe deos fecit timor’ is only true if we admit Wonder, Admiration, Interest, Respect, even Love, perhaps, to be, no less than Fear, essential constituents of this elemental mood” (The Threshold of Religion, 1909, pp. 8, 13).

4 W. Robertson Smith, The Religion of the Semites, p. 55.

5 Sainte-Beuve, Port Royal, vol. i, pp. 378–380, 33; vol. ii, pp. 328, 502 ff. Comp. Histoire de M. M. Alacoque, 10th ed., pp. 124–125.

6 Edwards, Jonathan, Thoughts on the Revival of Religion (1832), p. 203Google Scholar. The terrifying nature of Edwards's sermons is indicated by such titles as The Eternity of Hell Torments, The Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. In the last is found the following famous passage: “The God that holds you over the pit of Hell, much as we hold a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked. His wrath toward you burns like fire. He looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire. He is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight. You are ten thousand times so abominable in his eyes as the most hateful and venomous serpent is in ours…. There is no other reason to be given why you have not dropped into Hell since you arose this morning, but that God's hand has held you up. There is no other reason to be given why you have not gone to Hell since you sat here in the house of God, provoking his pure eyes by your sinful, wicked manner of attending to his solemn worship.”

Finney was of Edwards's mind. “Without pity or abatement he appealed to the selfish emotion of fear. He held that whoever comforts the sinner does him an injury ‘as cruel as the grave, as cruel as hell,’ for it is calculated to send him headlong to the abyss of everlasting fire” (F. M. Davenport, Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals, p. 193).

“Impassioned appeals to terror were uncommon with Wesley” (ibid., p. 167), yet he believed in everlasting torment for the wicked, and at times made fearful pictures of what awaited unrepentant sinners. If Wesley did not go so far as Edwards in “preaching terror,” some of his followers did. “No community ever saw more terrible scenes of mental and nervous disorder than are described in the Journal as having occurred under the preaching of one Berridge and one Hicks in the vicinity of Everton, almost under the shadow of the University of Cambridge” (ibid., p. 171).

7 “With Moody, religious evangelism was emancipation from the horrid spectres of irrational fear. I do not mean that he was blind to the natural law of retribution…. There was no thoughtless optimism about his preaching of divine justice. But the old emphasis was completely changed. Moody's favorite theme was the love of the Heavenly Father. He believed that the lash of terror is for slaves and not for the free born of Almighty God” (F. M. Davenport, op. cit., p. 204).

8 Fryer, A. T., “Psychological Aspects of the Welsh Revival 1904–5,” Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. xix, 1905, p. 92.Google Scholar

9 Reprinted from “The Contents of Religious Consciousness,” Monist, vol. xi, 1901, pp. 563–564.Google Scholar

10 In his study of conversion Starbuck found that in 14 per cent. of his cases fear of death and hell played a considerable part. His were chiefly adolescent conversions. (The Psychology of Religion, 1899, p. 52.)

11 G. Stanley Hall, in “A Study of Fears,” reports that only 11 out of 299 persons who answered his questionnaire mention specific fear of hell. (American Journal of Psychology, vol. viii, 1906–1907, p. 223Google Scholar.) Scott finds in an inquiry on “Old Age and Death” that 90 per cent. of his correspondents do not mention hell at all. (American Journal of Psychology, vol. viii, 1906–1907, p. 104.)Google Scholar

12 Harriet Martineau, Autobiography, vol. i, p. 31.

13 Leuba, J. H., “The Personifying Passion in Youth with Remarks upon the Sex and Gender Problem,” Monist, vol. x, 1900, p. 547.Google Scholar

See also Flournoy's, Th.“Observations de psychologie religieuse,” in Archives de psychologie, vol. ii, 1903, Observation II, p. 331.Google Scholar

14 Binet, A., “La peur chez les enfants,” Arnnée psychologique, vol. ii, 1895, pp. 224–225.Google Scholar

15 G. Stanley Hall, “A Study of Fears,” American Journal of Psychology, vol. viii, p. 238.

16 Horace Fletcher, “Happiness as found in Fore-thought minus Fear-thought,” Menticulture, Series II.

17 Wilson, George R., “The Sense of Danger and the Fear of Death,” Monist, vol. xiii, 1903, pp. 367, 366.Google Scholar

18 See on awe, W. McDougall, Social Psychology, pp. 129–132; on the sublime, Th. Ribot, Psychology of the Emotions, pp. 270, 348–350.

19 Compare William James on the sense of presence, in Varieties of Religious Experience, pp. 58 ff.

20 Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in Earth?

· · · · · · · · · · · · · ·

Who made you glorious as the Gates of Heaven beneath the keen full moon?

· · · · · · · · · · · · · ·

God! Let the torrents, like a shout of nations,

Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, God!

God, sing ye meadow streams with gladsome voice!

· · · · · · · · · · · · · ·

And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow,

And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God!

Coleridge, Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni.

21 A study of the origin, function, and future of religion will be found in the author's book, A Psychological Study of Religion, Macmillan, 1912.