viscount John Russell Amberley

“ We long for a resurrection; we should believe in it if we could; we do believe in it in sleep, when our feelings are free to roam at pleasure, unrestrained by the chilling presence of the material world. In dreams the old life is repeated again and again. Sometimes the lost one is beside us as of old, and we are quite untroubled by the thought of parting. Sometimes there is a strange and confusing consciousness that the great calamity has happened, or has been thought to happen, but that now we are again together, and that a new life has succeeded upon death. ”

“ We shall endeavor to lay bare the foundation of the vast superstructure of Theology and Ritual erected by the piety of the human race. We shall seek to discover, if that be possible, the element of unity amid so much variety, of permanence amid so much change. And should we be successful in the search, we shall be in a position, if not absolutely to solve, at least to attempt the solution of the great problem which ever has interested, and ever must interest mankind: Is there any such thing as positive truth in the sphere of Religion? ”

“ At an early age he felt—as so many young men of lofty character have always done—the hollowness of worldly pleasures, and withdrew himself from men to lead a solitary and ascetic life. After he had satisfied the craving for self-torture, and subdued the lusts of the flesh, he came forth, full of zeal for the redemption of mankind, to proclaim a new and startling gospel. India was at that time, as always, dominated by the system of caste. The Buddha, boldly breaking through the deepest prejudices of his countrymen, surrounded himself with a society in which caste was nothing. ”

“ The Holy Spirit not only speaks to our souls, but it speaks in them and through them. We receive, not the arbitrary command of an almighty potentate, but the inspiring force of a being who, while raising us above ourselves, is still a part, the best part, of ourselves. This indeed, in the deep imagination of the poet, makes all men noble.
Yet not in such a creed as this, sublime as it is in comparison with those that have gone before it, is the final resting-place of religious feeling. ”

“ O my child! receive the water of the Lord of the world, which is our life, and by which our body grows and flourishes: it is to wash and to purify; may this sky-blue and light-blue water enter thy body and there live. May it destroy and separate from thee all the evil that was beginning in thee before the beginning of the world, since all of us men are subject to its power, for our mother is Chalchivitlycue. ”

“ If we can no longer indulge in the contemplation of perfect virtue, embodied in an actual Person, we are free from the problem that has perplexed theologians of every age: how to reconcile the undoubted evil in the world with the omnipotence of that Person. I know that there are some who think it possible to retain the gentler features in the popular conception of deity, while dropping all that is harsh and repulsive. To them the idea of God is as free from terror as the idea of the Unknowable, and the first of these gains is therefore no gain to them. ”

“ No man can truly oppose their religion, for he who seems to be hostile to it is himself but one of the notes struck by the Unknowable Cause, which so plays upon the vast instrument of humanity as to bring harmony out of jangling sounds, and to produce the universal chords of truth from the individual discords of error. Scientific discoveries and philosophic inquiries, so fatal to other creeds, touch not the universal religion. ”

“ Imagination declines to picture the long future of solitude that lies before us. We cannot understand that we shall never again listen to the tones of the familiar voice; never feel the touch of the gentle hand; never be encouraged by the warm embrace that tells us we are loved, or find a refuge from miserable thoughts and the vexations of the world in the affectionate and ever-open heart. ”

“ Now there are some who have been taught by the bitter experience of their lives how difficult, nay, how impossible it is to realize in imagination the fact that a beloved companion is in truth gone from them forever. More especially will this mental difficulty be felt when he whom death has parted from our sides is young, vigorous, full of promise; when the infinite stillness of eternal rest has succeeded almost without a break upon the joyous activity of a well-spent life ”

“ Both the world without and the world within, both that which is perceived and that which perceives, require an origin beyond themselves. Both compel us to look, as their common source, to a Being alike unknown and unknowable, whose nature is shrouded in a mystery no eye can pierce, and no intellect can fathom.
This is the great truth which religion has presented to philosophy, and which philosophy, if she be truly (as her name implies) the love of wisdom, will not disdain to incorporate with the more recently discovered treasures belonging to her peculiar sphere. ”

“ Were it not for this desire, the Religious Idea—if I may venture by this term to denominate the original sentiment which is the beginning of positive religion—might remain locked up for ever in the breast of each individual who felt it. But there is innate in human beings—arriving like wanderers in the midst of a world they cannot understand—an overpowering wish to enter into some sort of communication with the mysterious agencies of whose extraordinary force they are continually conscious, but which appear to be hidden from their observation in impenetrable darkness. ”

“ There is, in fact, almost as much to be said on moral grounds for the divorce of unhappy couples as for the marriage of happy ones. Nor does Jesus by any means face the real difficulties of the question by allowing divorce where either of the parties has been guilty of adultery. This, no doubt, is the extreme case, and if divorce is not to be given here, it can be given nowhere. But why is adultery to be the sole ground of separation? Why is an institution which may bring so much happiness to mankind to be converted into one of the most fertile sources of human misery? ”

“ We have been far too much accustomed in Europe to treat the Bible as a book standing altogether by itself; to be admired, reverenced and loved, or, it may be, to be criticised, objected to and rejected, not as one of a class, but as something altogether peculiar and unparalleled in the literary history of the world. And, undoubtedly, if we compare it with ordinary literature of whatever description, whatever age, and whatever nation, this opinion is just. ”

“ Hope gradually dwindling to a fainter and fainter remnant, is crushed at last by the miserable certainty of profound despair. Yet even then, the mind of man refuses to accept its fate. The scene of the reunion, which we cannot but so ardently desire, is postponed to another season and to a better world. Many are they to whom this final hope is an enduring consolation, but if even that should fail us in the hour of darkness, as the more primitive and simpler hope failed before it; if here again emotion is reluctantly compelled to yield to reason ”

“ Every single argument we can frame to establish the existence of deity assumes in its major premiss the very thing to be proved. It takes for granted that phenomenal objects require a cause, and were not the idea of this necessity already in the mind it could not take one single step. For if it be contended, say, that the world could not exist without a Creator, we have but to ask, "Why not?" and our adversary can proceed no further with his argument. All he can ever do is to appeal to a sentiment in us corresponding to the sentiment of which he himself is conscious. ”

“ In this unequal combat of the strong against the weak, the synagogue has fairly beaten the Church, and has vindicated for itself that liberty which during centuries of suffering its enemy refused to grant. Eighteen hundred years have passed since the soldiers of Titus burned down the temple, laid Jerusalem in ashes, and scattered to the winds the remaining inhabitants of Judea; but the religion of the Jews is unshaken still; it stands unconquered and unconquerable, whether by the bloodthirsty fury of the legions of Rome, or by the still more bloodthirsty intolerance of the ministers of Christ. ”

“ The least assumption a religion can make is that of a single such power, and this (or more than this) it always must assume. For without this we should remain within the boundaries of science; we should examine and classify phenomena, but we could never pass beyond the phenomena themselves to their mysterious origin or their hidden cause.
But this is not the only assumption involved in every possible religion. Every religion assumes also that there is in human nature something equally hyperphysical with the power which it worships, whether we call this something soul, or mind, or spirit. ”

“ There remains therefore only the second of these two modes of existence as absolute and primary. The substance of consciousness, then, is the one reality which is known to exist; and in no other form is existence in its purity conceivable by us. For if we attempt to conceive a something as existent which is neither object nor subject, neither that which is felt nor that which feels, neither that which is thought nor that which thinks, we must inevitably fail. There is no tertium quid which is neither mind nor matter of which we can frame the most remote conception. ”

“ The Unknown Reality, which is the source of all phenomena whatsoever, mental and physical, must of necessity include within itself that mode of existence which is manifested in consciousness; for otherwise, we must imagine yet another power as the originator of conscious life, and we should then have two unknown entities, still requiring a higher entity behind them both, to effect that entire harmony which actually subsists between them. The Unknowable is, therefore, the hidden source from which both the great streams of being, internal and external, take their rise. ”

“ But among a people so subtle and so inquisitive in all matters of religious belief as the Hindus, opinion could not rest unmoved upon the original foundation. Their minds did not, like those of the Jews, stop short for ever in their intellectual progression, chained to the unshakeable rock of a god-given Revelation. Ever active, ever attracted to the enigmas of life, the Brahmans pushed their speculations into new regions of thought, pondered upon new problems, and invented new solutions. ”

“ But this line of argument seems to tend to nothing short of the absolute annihilation of religion. Under the touch of a comparative anatomy of creeds, all that was imposing and magnificent in the edifice of theology crumbles into dust. Systems of thought piled up with elaborate care, philosophies evolved by centuries of toilsome preparation, fall into shapeless ruins at 646 our feet. And all this by the simple process of putting them side by side.
Can we, however, rest content in the assumption that so vast a superstructure as that of religion has no solid foundation in the mind of man? ”

“ In that case a resurrection would have taken place for us, and for those who believed our tale. So far from the reappearance of the well-known form seeming to be strange, it is its failure to reappear that is strange to us in these times of sorrow. We fondly conceive that in some way the dead must still exist; and if so, can one, who was so tender before, listen to our cry of pain and refuse to come? can one, who soothed us in the lesser troubles of our lives, look on while we are suffering the greatest agony of all and fail to comfort? ”

“ Who is holding the earth and the skies above it? Who made the waters and the trees of the field? Who is in the winds and storms that they so quickly run? Who is the creator of the good-minded beings, thou Wise One? ”