way of saying that the more highly evolved religions owe their character to the greatly varied and abundant intellectual elements which are built into them.  And this is why religion in the highest form, more clearly than in the lowest forms, is to be spoken of as an outlook upon the world which is determined by the total intellectual equipment of the individual man who thinks about the universe and directs his course of action by what he finds.

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We come now to a closer concrete study of the basic elements of religion; that is, of those beliefs that are invariably present, in one form or another, in every system of piety and worship, and that constitute the innermost framework beneath the secondary creeds added to them.  Following Mallock and others, we may distinguish three such elemental conceptions.  These are, first, the belief in the existence of a supernatural being or beings, endowed with intelligence like, but superior to, our own; second, the idea of human responsibility to this or these powers; and, third, the belief in immortality as an attribute of the supreme powers and of human individuals also.  Let us see how these beliefs appear in characteristic systems of religion.

In all forms of Christianity the central idea is the conception of a triple unity personified as God.  He is regarded as the Creator who has made all things and who demands reverence from his subjects.  He is the Author and Finisher of the faith as well as the sole Cause of the universe itself.  Much of this element is directly derived from Judaism, the progenitor of Christianity; but a difference consists in the triple nature of the supreme being according to the newer creed.  As the original and supreme being, God is not only the Creator, but the watchful Judge as well, demanding reverent obedience to the laws of the world in which he has placed man, and imposing sacrifices and penitential observances when his mandates have been disobeyed.  As the God of Mercy he is incarnated in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, and offered as a vicarious sacrifice for sinners who are thus enabled to escape the penalties they would otherwise have suffered.  As the Holy Ghost, God is the vaguely personified ultimate source of the higher and nobler elements of human thought, aspiration, and life in general.  The second basic tenet of Christianity is that of human responsibility to God, to whom man is related as the created to a creator, as a subject to a ruler, and as one saved to his redeemer.  The institutions of sacrifice and ritual are outward signs of human subjection to God himself and to his laws, according to which the universe is conceived to operate.  Finally, Christianity teaches that just as God in his single and triune form is eternal, so the soul of man is immortal, with or without its earthly temple of flesh and blood.  The essential thinking individual is believed to pass to heaven, where rewards for right living are bestowed, or to hell, in order to suffer punishment for sin during all eternity, or some part of it, according to different views regarding the efficacy of Christ’s vicarious atonement.