The Essence of Religious Feeling

In the book The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, the Prince Muishkin had a discussion about religion with another character named Rogojin who had asked the prince if he believed in God. As part of his answer to the question, the prince related an encounter he had had recently with a simple Russian mother: “I went homewards, and near the hotel I came across a poor woman, carrying a child—a baby of some six weeks old. The mother was quite a girl herself. The baby was smiling up at her, for the first time in its life, just at that moment; and while I watched the woman she suddenly crossed herself, oh, so devoutly! ‘What is it, my good woman?’ I asked her…. ‘Exactly as is a mother’s joy when her baby smiles for the first time into her eyes, so is God’s joy when one of His children turns and prays to Him for the first time, with all his heart!’ This is what that poor woman said to me, almost word for word; and such a deep, refined, truly religious thought it was—a thought in which the whole essence of Christianity was expressed in one flash—that is, the recognition of God as our Father, and of God’s joy in men as His own children, which is the chief idea of Christ.” I love that thought and believe it to be true: the essence of Christianity is indeed that God as our Father has joy when one of His children turns to Him and that Christ’s mission was to turn us all to the Father. The Savior expressed this in essence in the great intercessory prayer to the Father: “And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me” (John 17:22-23). The Savior came so that we could know that the Father loves us and that we could be one with Him and with His Son. Modern scripture puts it this way: “Remember the worth of souls is great in the sight of God; For, behold, the Lord your Redeemer suffered death in the flesh; wherefore he suffered the pain of all men, that all men might repent and come unto him. And he hath risen again from the dead, that he might bring all men unto him, on conditions of repentance. And how great is his joy in the soul that repenteth!” (Doctrine and Covenants 18:10-13) We are of great worth in God’s sight and His joy is great for each of us who repents and comes unto Him.

                To finish answering Rogojin’s question about whether he believed in God, the prince continued, “Listen, [Rogojin]; you put a question to me just now. This is my reply. The essence of religious feeling has nothing to do with reason, or atheism, or crime, or acts of any kind—it has nothing to do with these things—and never had. There is something besides all this, something which the arguments of the atheists can never touch. But the principal thing, and the conclusion of my argument, is that this is most clearly seen in the heart of a Russian. This is a conviction which I have gained while I have been in this Russia of ours.” I love that thought. There will indeed always be arguments of the atheists against the existence of God and the validity of religion, but there is an essence to religious feeling that can never be taken away with such secular reasoning. There has been and always will be an internal conviction in the heart of people who know God and who cannot be persuaded by the logical arguments of the unbelievers. There will always be the people like Korihor in every age who will argue with their heads against the “silly traditions” of the believers and revile against their “their dreams and their whims and their visions and their pretended mysteries,” saying that they believe in “some unknown being, who they say is God—a being who never has been seen or known, who never was nor ever will be.” But with Alma, we can reply from our hearts, “What evidence have ye that there is no God, or that Christ cometh not?... All things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator” (Alma 30:28, 31, 40, 44). We have the powerful testimony of the scriptures in addition to “all the holy prophets” along with millions of believers who affirm from their souls that God lives and that we our His children. The reason of the atheist can never offer a feeling as profound as the internal conviction, born of the Spirit of God, that “there is a God in heaven, who is infinite and eternal, from everlasting to everlasting the same unchangeable God, the framer of heaven and earth, and all things which are in them; And that he created man, male and female, after his own image and in his own likeness, created he them” (Doctrine and Covenants 20:17-18).