Puslapio vaizdai
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Dimly works through strife eternal
The inner sense to outward form,
Faintly dawns the light supernal
With earthly tinges, deep and warm.

On fateful years descends the glory
Flashed from out the hidden mind:
Treadeth still a dæmon story

Through all the footprints left behind.

Life of man and life of nation

Transform the guise of clouded face;
Gives, at last, the world's probation
The calmer strength of art and grace.

W. J. ARMSTRONG.

THE RELIGIOUS PRODUCTIVENESS OF HUMANITY.

M.'

RENAN says: "We must give up the attempt to explain by processes accessible to experience the primitive facts of religions, facts that have no analogies since humanity has lost its religious productiveness." *

Has humanity lost its religious productiveness?

Science affirms that no particle of material existence can ever pass away. Once created is forever created. Can it be that a faculty of the human mind shall in a few centuries die out-and that, too, the highest, noblest, and most important to the soul, the creative religious faculty? Is then, mind less durable than matter? When we combine with this the further belief of M. Renan (expressed in various ways throughout his works) and indeed of most of the thinkers of to-day, that God does not interfere to improve the laws of His universe, or renew them if they be outgrown, which forbids any hope of progress by direct revelation, is it not saying to posterity, what God never said to the human mind, "Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther"? Is Christianity, with its disputed history, its many misconceptions, its doctrinal, human additions - Christianity, which in this well-worn condition already cramps free-thinking humanity, to be the limit of spiritual growth? Must innumerable hosts of the future still flutter the rags and tatters of Christianity long after the warm life and pure truth that have characterized it, are passed away from it? (For I suppose if human faculties can die out, so can the life and truth of

* Studies of Religious History and Criticism, Page 226.

a religious belief). Surely, the loss of the religious productiveness of humanity opens a vista of futurity too awful to contemplate !

Out of the heart of the stern old tree of Semitic monotheism sprang the strong stem of Christianity. The human soul had grown fuller and deeper, and was ready for a new religion. It came. It scrupled not to absorb into its life the graceful imagery and delicate sentiment of the Indo-European mind. Combining truth and earnestness with beauty and sentiment, shrouded with the veil of doubt and exaggeration that necessarily surrounded all things in those early ages, it has touched the human heart and taken possession of it, as has nothing else since the creation of the world. And as Christianity grew out of the ancient monotheism, retaining in its bosom all that was holiest and best of the parent-life, and without attempting to destroy, simply superseded it, by a newer, deeper and truer life in itself— so may it not again come to pass, as mankind shall grow yet more capable of higher and nobler life, that another new religion shall spring forth from the bosom of Christianity, and without destroying one jot or one tittle of Christian truth and excellence, lead onward to loftier heights of purity and light than we have ever dreamed of?

At least we dare not doubt that God's truth is still as far above us as the heavens are higher than the earth, and that there is no limit set to the growth of the human soul. It is hardly fair, because the grand truths of Christianity have served to elevate and purify mankind for nearly two thousand years, to affirm that we shall never have so absorbed them into our hearts and assimilated them with our souls as to be capable of desiring and learning yet higher truth. It will not be fair to affirm it, if some hundreds or thousands of years more shall pass, without seeing the birth of a new religion. The purity and excellence of Christian truth was too far beyond average humanity, at the first, to be more than very faintly comprehended by its early believers. Generation after generation must come and go, each raising its general level of morality and piety a little step beyond its predecessor. Who shall decide how many, ere the great Christian Faith shall, either in man's service be straitened and chilled till its vital truth is driven from it, leaving only dead forms and meaningless ceremonies, or by man's noble devotion its purity and holiness shall so penetrate the very soul of humanity as to raise average mankind to a level of excellence approximating to that of Jesus himself? Either result requires the birth of a new religion. We dare not look for a millenium such as the latter suggestion presents; particularly while the tendency of strict Christianity points so distinctly toward the former alternative.

But aside from reasoning, do not facts alone disprove M. Renan's assertion.

In the eighteenth century, in an obscure state of Europe, lived a man who saw visions and wrote them down for the world, as did St. John at Patmos. He discoursed of those things concerning which man is naturally interested, but of which he can never really know while he sojourns in the flesh; of that life which is best expressed in the simple Indian manner, as the Hereafter; of appearances and realities there; of spirit form and spirit life; of spirit happiness and misery; of spirit work and society. A little band of admirers, attracted by these stories, clustered into churches and assumed his But it was not thus that his greatest power has been exercised. Slowly and unconsciously, but surely, like leaven in meal, these ideas concerning spirit-life in the Hereafter have crept into the hearts of men, taking firm hold of vast numbers who never dream of attributing them to their first promulgator, Swedenborg. No persecution has urged on the spread of these doctrines. They seem to have been accepted simply because they are the best ever yet presented, of spirit-life.

name.

In some way- probably it would be difficult, even in the full blaze of the unhistorical present, to learn how - certain magnetic and electric phenomena were attributed to spiritual agency. In time a startling combination of the doctrines of Swedenborgian Spirit-life with electro-magnetic raps and table-tippings, and mesmeric wonders as yet only half understood, supported by a moral code fully equal to the requirements of average, enlightened, Christian humanity, gives us that great object of interest and study to the present generation, and probably to many in the future, the nascent religion, Spiritualism. Swedenborg was its John the Baptist.

What may be the future of this great movement none can predict. Thoughtful men shake their heads wisely, and say, “There must be something in it." Certainly there is; something of good, and something of evil, as in everything human. Enough of good in its morals and doctrines to satisfy good men, and enough of wonder-workings and miracles to excite the credulity of the simple, the investigation of the more learned, and the interest of all men.

Without pretending to understand it, we may safely say that it bids fair to be ranked with the great religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islamism; and we need not yet mourn the loss of religious productiveness from humanity.

God grant we may never be called to such a funeral!

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