The Varieties of Religious Experience - Penn State University

The Varieties of Religious ExperienceYou see how natural it is, from this point of view, to treat religionas a mere survival, for religion does in fact perpetuate the traditionsof the most primeval thought. To coerce the spiritual powers, or tosquare them and get them on our side, was, during enormous tractsof time, the one great object in our dealings with the natural world.den Absichter der naturlichen Dinge, 1782. pp.74-84.Or read the account of God’s beneficence in the institution of “the greatvariety throughout the world of men’s faces, voices, and hand-writing,”given in Derham’s Physico-theology, a book that had much vogue in theeighteenth century. “Had Man’s body,” says Dr. Derham, “been madeaccording to any of the Atheistical Schemes, or any other Method thanthat of the infinite Lord of the World, this wise Variety would never havebeen: but Men’s Faces would have been cast in the same, or not a verydifferent Mould, their Organs of Speech would have sounded the same ornot so great a Variety of Notes, and the same Structure of Muscles andNerves would have given the Hand the same Direction in Writing. And inthis Case what Confusion, what Disturbance, what Mischiefs would theworld eternally have lain under! No Security could have been to our persons;no Certainty, no Enjoyment of our Possessions; no Justice betweenMan and Man, no Distinction between Good and Bad, between Friendsand Foes, between Father and Child, Husband and Wife, Male or Female;but all would have been turned topsy-turvy, by being exposed to the Maliceof the Envious and ill-Natured, to the Fraud and Violence of Knavesand Robbers, to the Forgeries of the crafty Cheat, to the Lusts of theEffeminate and Debauched, and what not! Our Courts of Justice can abundantlytestify the dire Effects of Mistaking Men’s Faces, of counterfeitingtheir Hands, and forging Writings.But now as the infinitely wise Creator and Ruler hath ordered the Matter,every man’s Face can distinguish him in the Light, and his Voice in theDark, his Hand-writing can speak for him though absent, and be hisWitness, and secure his Contracts in future Generations. A manifest aswell as admirable Indication of the divine Superintendence and Management.”A God so careful as to make provision even for the unmistakable signingof bank checks and deeds was a deity truly after the heart of eighteenthcentury Anglicanism.I subjoin, omitting the capitals, Derham’s “Vindication of God by theInstitution of Hills and Valleys,” and Wolff’s altogether culinary accountof the institution of Water:—438