 By the term divine James meant "any object that is god"like", whether it be a concrete deity or not" to which the individual feels impelled to respond with solemnity and gravity.The sociologist Émile Durkheim, in his seminal book "The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life", defined religion as a "unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things".By sacred things he meant things "set apart and forbidden—beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them".