Alfred Williams Momerie

“ Will the religion of the future involve a Deity? The gods are going: will God remain? Of the four greatest Reformers—Confucius, Gautama, Christ, Mohammed—only two were Theists. And it is sometimes said that an atheistic religion is “nothing but morality.” Well, if this were true, morality without a God would be better than a god without morality. But it is a mistake to say that a religion of conduct is only morality. It is a mistake to restrict the term religion to an explicit recognition of God. It is a mistake to talk of religion and morality as if they could exist altogether apart. ”

“ We find within ourselves a sentiment of justice, and yet this sentiment is being for ever violated by the fortunes and misfortunes of our neighbours. Immortality, and immortality alone, can reconcile these strange contradictions. (c) It is the only hypothesis which affords a logical basis for religion. I know that he who truly loves goodness loves it for its own sake, that he neither seeks nor needs reward. But if goodness be doomed to annihilation, it loses all its charm, and devotion to it becomes unreasonable—an amiable but quixotic weakness. ”

“ Theism—belief in a Being deservedly called God—could not be established until after the uniformity of nature had been discovered. We must cease to believe in many changeable wills, before we can begin to believe in One that is unchangeable. We must cease to believe in a finite God, outside of nature, who capriciously interferes with her phenomena, before we can begin to believe in an infinite God, immanent in nature, of whose mind and will all natural phenomena are the various but never-varying expressions. ”

“ The priests as a rule, and the great majority of mankind, have embraced the one; the prophets and a very small minority the other. The one is interested, the other disinterested. The one consists in devotion to pleasure, the other in devotion to character. The one is the art of getting good things, the other the art of becoming good. The one has an ideal of advantage, the other an ideal of righteousness. The one ignores morality or relegates it to a secondary place, the other makes morality supreme. The one is the religion of savages and of a low stage of evolution ”

“ And some of us have not only learnt to disbelieve in the existence of the old gods; we are beginning to feel that, even if they did exist, we should not worship them—we should treat them with execration and contempt. The number of human beings is continually on the increase who sympathise with the words of John Stuart Mill, “If God can send me to hell for not saying wrong is right, to hell I will go.” ”

“ To suppose that there is a height in the range of being whereto having attained, this slowly evolved personality vanishes like a volcanic island and subsides into the ocean of impersonal being, is to suppose that the whole scheme of things is self-stultifying, a great much ado about nothing, the building of a tower which should reach unto heaven, but which, like a child’s house of cards, as soon as it is finished will be again swept flat. ”

“ There is no such thing as mere morality. In the good sense of the word, there is no such thing as mere religion. There is in morality [8] at least an implicit recognition of God. Right conduct is all He can require of us, all that we can do for Him. And therefore one man who thinks he disbelieves in God may please Him as well, or even better, than another who thinks he believes in Him. ”

“ Religion is probably derived etymologically, as Cicero originally maintained, from relegere, to care for, attend to, regard. [1] But be that as it may, the term is invariably used to express the supreme and most important object of human attention. With the vast majority of mankind, whom I had the dishonour that morning to represent, the supreme object of attention is salvation from suffering. This conception of religion can be traced back to the primitive savage. The strongest instincts in his rude nature were desire for pleasure and dread of pain. ”

“ All evil thoughts, words and works to hell.”—Confucius was so anxious to fix men’s attention on their present duty, that he would enter into no metaphysical speculations regarding the problem of immortality. When questioned about it he replied, “I do not as yet know what life is; how can I understand death?” The whole duty of man, he said, might be summed up in the word Reciprocity; we must refrain from injuring others, as we would that they should refrain from injuring us.—Gautama taught that every man has to work out his salvation for himself without the mediation of a priest. ”

“ In such a universe the man who tries to act morally is a fool. The wise man would adopt as his maxim the words of a modern Koheleth: “Every moment some form grows perfect in hand or face, some tone on the hills or sea is choicer than the rest, some mood or passion of intellectual excitement is irresistibly attractive for us—and for that moment only. ”

“ Morality is the beginning of true religion; it is religion not yet come to full consciousness of itself. The man who has done the will of God is not to be called irreligious, merely because he has made a mistake in metaphysics. ”

“ In all ages and countries men have sacrificed to the gods for gain.
In most ages and countries, however, there have arisen prophets—and my companion on the Tors was one of their disciples—prophets like Isaiah, Confucius, Zoroaster, Gautama, Christ, Mohammed, who opposed the popular religion, protested against the teaching of the priests, maintained the worthlessness of ceremonialism, and declared that personal conduct should be the supreme object of human attention. ”

“ But true worship would begin—the worship of a Deity who is all and only good; while in every worshipper would be kindled an enthusiasm for righteousness, a passionate resolve to “work together with God” for the elevation and amelioration of the race. ”

“ Were our minds and senses so expanded, strengthened and illuminated as to enable us to see and feel the very molecules of the brain, were we capable of following all their motions, all their groupings, all their electric discharges, if such there be, and were we intimately acquainted with the corresponding states of thought and feeling, we should still be as far as ever from the solution of the problem—How are these physical processes connected with the facts of consciousness? ”

“ To interpret is to explain, and nothing can be explained that is not in itself rational. Reason can only grasp what is reasonable. You cannot explain the conduct of a fool. You cannot interpret the actions of a lunatic. They are contradictory, meaningless, unintelligible. Similarly if nature were an irrational system, there would be no possibility of knowledge. The interpretation of nature consists in making our own the thoughts which nature implies. Scientific hypothesis consists in guessing at these thoughts ”

“ From the beginning to the end of the transaction there was no question of morality. Neither priest nor layman inquired into the character of the gods. The devotees never asked if the sacrifices were legitimate. It was sufficient to believe that they would pay. A man’s religion was but one of many “irons in the fire,” which differed from the others only in being somewhat more expensive. For his own salvation he would offer up anything and everything that god or devil might demand. He did not shrink even from human sacrifice. ”

“ It is a hypothesis which is in harmony with experience. Immortality would be but another exemplification of that order and progress which we find everywhere throughout nature. “The advance through inorganic, vegetative, animated and self-conscious existence, and again from the lowest savage to the loftiest philosopher, is all in the direction of a more complete and definite personality. The severance of the ego from the non-ego is the supreme result of all the machinery of the physical life. ”

“ We may have struggled bravely to live a useful, heroic life, to help on the progress of the world, but the object for which we have worked we shall never see. Long ere that we shall have been “cast as rubbish to the void.” ”

“ It is a hypothesis which explains experience. We find within ourselves a thirst for happiness, and yet we are never happy. We find within ourselves a yearning for perfection, and yet we are miserably imperfect. ”

“ Woe unto you, Scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites, who make clean the outside of the cup and the platter but within are full of extortion and excess, who devour widows’ houses and for a pretence make long prayers. ”

“ For when we contemplate the suffering and disaster around us, we are sometimes tempted to think that the great Contriver is either indifferent to human welfare or incapable of securing it. But evolution, which is only another name for continuous improvement, inspires us with confidence. ”

“ At present she represents the religions of the past—religions which Christ and all the prophets condemned, religions which are gradually dying out with the gradual development of the race. The barbaric theory of sacrifice continues to disgrace her formularies. And, apart from this, she is essentially anti-Christian in the importance which she attaches to “belief.” The fact is, “the world” has become more Christian than the Church. The most highly educated people have discarded the fundamental doctrines of orthodoxy. ”

“ Earnestness is absent, enthusiasm has died out. The notion has fixed itself in the minds of the generality of Moslems that the right of private judgment ceased with the early legists; so they adopt unconditionally the interpretations of men who lived in the eighth century, and who could therefore have had no conception of the necessities of the nineteenth. Mohammedans in the present day are governed in their lives and conduct less by the precepts of Mohammed than by the theories of the commentators— theories which are often utterly at variance with the Prophet’s spirit. ”

“ La religion de Jésus est à quelques égards la religion définitive. Après lui il n’y a plus qu’ developper et à féconder. ‘Christianisme’ est devenu Presque synonyme de ‘religion.’ Tout ce qu’on fera en dehors de cette grande et bonne tradition chrétienne sera stérile. Quels que puissent être les transformasions du dogme, Jésus restera en religion le créateur du, sentiment pur. Quels que puissent être les phénomènes de l’avenir, Jésus ne sera pas surpassé. ”

“ A counted number of pulses is given us of a variegated life. We are all condemned to die. We have an interval, and then our place knows us no more. Our one chance is in getting into this interval as many pulsations as possible.” Pleasure is always pleasurable more or less. ”

“ Further, it is now established, beyond the possibility of reasonable dispute, that the Gospel miracles—except possibly those of healing—were altogether imaginary. Every great religious teacher has been accredited by his admiring disciples with a supernatural birth and resurrection, and with unlimited control over the phenomena of nature. ”

“ It suggests indeed that the Creator is not omnipotent, in the vulgar sense of being able to do impossibilities; but it also suggests that the difficulties of creation are being surely, though slowly, overcome. ”

“ There are again many clergymen—I have letters from them continually—who are eager for reform, but who refrain from speaking out for fear of losing their livings, or because they think that nobody would listen to them. ”

“ Even the average man is beginning to look upon those doctrines with suspicion and contempt. They are opposed to the best instincts of the race—instincts which are becoming every day more authoritative. ”

“ So too he insisted on the uselessness of fasts and penances and other forms of ritual. “Neither going naked, nor shaving the head, nor wearing matted hair, nor dirt, nor a rough garment, nor reading the Vedas, will cleanse a man. ”