The Churches and Modern Thought An inquiry into the...

The fact that a large proportion of the human race, including some of the greatest34 in thought and action, continue, or appear to continue, to believe in God and immortality, is considered by many to furnish the best proof for the truth of the belief. The Church naturally encourages this opinion, and proceeds to strengthen it further by asserting that the religious instinct is, and always has been, universal. This assertion must now be examined, and, to avoid any misconceptions, it will be advisable in the first place to have some specimens of it before us.

Canon Liddon informs us that “man is ever feeling after God,” and that “the thought of God is always latent in the mind of man.” “Cicero’s statement that there is no nation so barbarous and wild as not to have believed in some divinity is still, notwithstanding certain apparent exceptions, true. A nation of pure Atheists has yet to be discovered.”35 Dr. Flint devotes the seventh of his Lectures on Anti-Theistic theories to the discussion of the question, “Are there tribes of Atheists?” and he comes to the conclusion that “an impartial examination of the relevant facts shows that religion is virtually universal.”36 The Bishop of London is of opinion that “man is a praying animal. He always has prayed throughout his history. It is a human instinct. This instinct of prayer points to the existence of God.”37 Dr. Warschauer affirms that the spiritual faculty—a consciousness of “the existence of spiritual realities, of a world beyond the senses”—“constitutes a universal human endowment.”38 Bishop Diggle bids us remember that “human nature is ineradicably religious.”39