Cultus

“ And what is more, quite superior, virtuous people, religious in the best sense of the word, are apt to have, besides the ostensible and perhaps rather obsolete one of churches and meeting-houses, another cultus, esoteric, unspoken but acted upon, of which the priests and casuists are ladies'-maids and butlers. ”

“ Honour and worship, what. Honour consisteth in the inward thought, and opinion of the power, and goodness of another; and therefore to honour God, is to think as highly of his power and goodness, as is possible. And of that opinion, the external signs appearing in the words and actions of men, are called worship; which is one part of that which the Latins understand by the word cultus. For cultus signifieth properly, and constantly, that labour which a man bestows on anything, with a purpose to make benefit by it. ”

“ When I think about religion at all, I feel as if I would like to found an order for those who cannot believe: the Confraternity of the Faithless, one might call it, where on an altar, on which no taper burned, a priest, in whose heart peace had no dwelling, might celebrate with unblessed bread and a chalice empty of wine. Every thing to be true must become a religion. ”

“ Differences of Church, albeit in each the same word, God, is spoken, have built a dividing wall between two throbbing hearts. I often ask myself uneasily: is religion indeed a blessing to mankind? Religion, which is meant to save us from our sins, how many sins are committed in thy name? ”

“ In the first place, I am no sectarian; least of all am I a spiritualist; and if I am anything of a creed man,—which the Lord grant I am!—I am of a church that is founded on the system of marvels, as indeed, for that matter, are all churches, Christian or Pagan. The Saviour of mankind, let me with all reverence say, is admitted to have been duplex in character,—mortal for our sympathies, divine for our worship. ”

“ I still admire the Liturgy, and I still believe the Articles of the church; I still retain that religion which you say is venerable for its antiquity; but, then, I believe it is not to remain a religion of mere forms and ceremonies, but that it is to operate on my heart, and produce within me the peaceable fruits of righteousness. The new religion, as you and others are pleased to term it, is not a corruption of the old; but it is the old religion of our venerable Reformers, and the good old bishops and pastors of our church, revived in its primitive simplicity, and life, and power. ”

“ Do you think there is going to be a poorer religion than there has been in the past? I look to the time when we shall have a church as wide as the horizon, domed by the blue, lighted by the sun, the Sun of Righteousness, the Eternal Truth of the Father; a church in which all men shall be recognized as brothers, of whatever sect or whatever religion, in which all shall kneel and chant or lisp their worship according as they are able, the worship of the one Father, cheered and inspired by the one universal and eternal hope for man. ”

“ On the rock of a human character, ennobled by faith in his divine Sonship, he could raise the church of the future, which should be at the same time continuous with the old, new in spiritual power, one in worship and in work. ”

“ They are an integral, if not an essential, part of the ceremonial, the pomp and power of an outward religion, that carnal perversion of the true idea of the Christian Church, and the legitimate consequence of beginning in the spirit and seeking to be made perfect in the flesh. ”

“ We are now near the close of the nineteenth century of the Christian era, but the faith we profess is by no means a worn-out cult, a spent force, a religious movement which has run its evolutionary course and is now about to take its place among the things that have been. Such a fate may overtake a religion as well as other things. ”

“ This rapid development in the direction of individual freedom of thought may give us at length a church—by whatever name it may be designated—where the only creed held binding will be the creed of love, the only devotion essential to true fellowship a devotion to truth and duty. ”

“ He must be accustomed to regard the inner religion of the heart and that of the external church as perfectly one, as the great universal sacrament, which again divides itself into so many others, and communicates to these parts its holiness, indestructibleness, and eternity. ”

“ My church, that in which I believe, that which I seek for, that in which I already, in the depth of my soul, live and worship, is one in which certain dogmas and forms would not separate those who are united in the same highest love. ”

“ Worship and sacrifice, procedures for working on the dispositions of the deity, theology and ceremony and ecclesiastical organization, are the essentials of religion in the institutional branch. Were we to limit our view to it, we should have to define religion as an external art, the art of winning the favor of the gods. In the more personal branch of religion it is on the contrary the inner dispositions of man himself which form the centre of interest, his conscience, his deserts, his helplessness, his incompleteness. ”

“ Can we mistake or miscarry, by complying with the great body of God's Church through all ages, and particularly with those great lights of the primitive Church, who, by the excellency of their knowledge, and the integrity of their virtue, have so illustrated our holy religion? ”

“ Our exalted historical religion, a religion which has progressed from one enlightened condition to another, which breathes only love for humanity and the knowledge of God cannot have the sacrificial cult as an essential part of its being. ”

“ To the withered traditional church yielding dry catechisms, he let in nature again, and the worshiper, escaping from the vestry of verbs and texts, is surprised to find himself a party to the whole of his religion. His religion thinks for him, and is of universal application. He turns it on every side; it fits every part of life, interprets and dignifies every circumstance. ”

“ And although the favor of the God, as forfeited or gained, is still an essential feature of the story, and theology plays a vital part therein, yet the acts to which this sort of religion prompts are personal not ritual acts, the individual transacts the business by himself alone, and the ecclesiastical organization, with its priests and sacraments and other go-betweens, sinks to an altogether secondary place. ”

“ Is it all dark cloud-land when we have done with this fever we call life? Religion is man’s attempt to answer this question. A church is an attempt to answer it in a certain way. The true church is the church which gives the true answer. But who is to decide? ‘The Catholic and Apostolic Church,’ says one; ‘the Bible,’ says another. ”

“ But the whole state of man is a state of culture; and its flowering and completion may be described as Religion, or Worship. There is always some religion, some hope and fear extended into the invisible, — from the blind boding which nails a horseshoe to the mast or the threshold, up to the song of the Elders in the Apocalypse. But the religion cannot rise above the state of the votary. Heaven always bears some proportion to earth. ”

“ And I merely report the genuine facts, human and superhuman, when I say that whatever any form of the visible church has done or will do for the religious life of mankind, the crowning source of religious insight is, for us all, the actual loyalty, service, devotion, suffering, accomplishment, traditions, example, teaching, and triumphs of the invisible church of all the faithful. And by the invisible church I mean the brotherhood consisting of all who, in any clime or land, live in the Spirit. ”

“ A third stage or aspect is that of the cult, the worship, the establishment of a priesthood delivering authoritative messages, mediating influences to the people, and adding constantly to the body of explanations and interpretations surrounding each divinity. ”

“ In the world, and in society, religion is a tabooed subject—it is only kept for Sundays and for churches. I believe your clergy know no more of the real doctrines of Christianity, those deep and mystical truths underlying the teachings of Christ, than the child at his mother’s knee. ”

“ Our Lord tells us, "Except ye become as little children ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven"; and again: "Narrow is the gate and strait the way that leadeth to life." Do not wonder, then, that our holy church, which is glorious and magnificent in the eyes of angels and saints, should be thought little, and lowly, and poor by the world, and the flesh, and the devil. ”

“ All the little distinctions of modes, forms, and particular expressions of devotion and worship will be swallowed up and lost in the unlimited effusions of heavenly love, charity, and benevolence with which the hearts of every member of this glorious New Church and Body of Jesus Christ will overflow one toward another. ”

“ What does God expect of us, in view of these facts, as men to whom the interests and management of a portion of his church are confided? As men to whom he has given his inspired oracles, as the sure word of prophecy, to which we are to give heed? ”

“ She finds all the articles of her faith more solemnly affirmed; all the practices which her piety demands more numerous and accessible; confession, absolution, communion—all is there; and must she refrain from satisfying her thirst for them?
“Is it credible that a soul thus thirsty for truth, faith, and love should be much disposed to recoil from the difficulty of accepting one word more in the confession of faith, [10] or of recognizing the head of the universal church as the head of the church in the East as well as of that in the West? ”

“ As the great central rite of Christian worship it is presented day after day, in myriads of churches, from age to age, to the eyes and hearts of men. The act in which Christians assemble, in which they offer up at once their repentance and their requests, their thanksgivings and their praises, to Him who has formed them into one Body, lives upon this truth. And further, the order of men which is the backbone of the Church, the great Christian priesthood, made by our Lord in instituting the rite and conferring the gift, exists for its continuance. ”

“ Know that thou canst not have desire for the salvation of souls without having it for Holy Church; for she is the universal body of all creatures who share the light of holy faith, who can have no life if they are not obedient to My Bride. Therefore, thou oughtest to desire to see thy Christian neighbours, and the infidels and every rational creature, feeding in this garden, under the yoke of holy obedience, clothed in the light of living faith, and with good and holy works—for faith without works is dead. ”

“ From first to last the Mother church seemed type and shadow of the warfare between the flesh and Spirit, even that shadow, whose substance is the divine Spirit, imperatively propelling the greatest moral, physical, civil, and religious reform ever known on earth. ”

“ THE CULT, ITS SYMBOLS AND RITES.
As the side which a religious system presents to the intellect is shown in the Myth, so the side that it presents to sense is exhibited in the Cult. This includes the representation and forms of worship of the unknown power which presides over the fruition of the Prayer or religious wish. The representation is effected by the Symbol, the worship by the Rite. The development of these two, and their relation to religious thought, will be the subject of the present chapter. ”

“ Let the workingman be urged and led to the worship of God, to the earnest practice of religion, and, among other things, to the keeping holy of Sundays and holydays. Let him learn to reverence and love Holy Church, the common Mother of us all ”

“ And in that place, religion, religious system, its claim to overpower one, presented itself in a way of which even the least serious by nature could not be unaware. Their great church, its customs and traditions, formed an element in that esprit de corps into which the boyish mind throws itself so readily. ”

“ What does faith rest upon? What is to be said of inspiration, and authority, and the essential attributes of a church? These, and other questions of the most essential religious importance, as the nature and signification of the doctrines of the Trinity, of the Incarnation of Christ, of Redemption, of Atonement, discussions as to the relations between faith and morals, and on the old, inevitable enigmas of necessity and liberty, all more or less entered into that mixed whirl of earnest inquiry and flippant scepticism which is summed up under the general name of the Deistic Controversy. ”

“ The theory of justification by works, to which the Church owed so much of its power and wealth, had, in its development, to a great extent deprived religion of all spiritual vitality, replacing its essentials with a dry and meaningless formalism. ”

“ Now, we ask, can this system commend itself to the human reason as rounded and complete enough to fulfil the Christian idea of a church, which should receive and embrace the whole world in one union of religious harmony? A book thrown into the world—for so it must look to human eyes who knew nothing of its divinity—which each one was to take up and interpret as he pleased ”

“ That he might present it to himself—that he might perfectly unite it to himself in the great day, a glorious church, perfect in knowledge and in holiness, not having spot, nor wrinkle, nor any such thing, nothing of deformity or defilement remaining, but being entirely amiable and pleasing in his eye, holy and without blemish, free from the least remains of sin. The church in general, and particular believers, will not be without spot or wrinkle till they come to glory. ”

“ Did the servants of Christ know what it is to live in Reformed Churches with unreformed spirits, under strict order with loose hearts, how formes of Religion breed but formes of Godlinesse, how men by Church-discipline, learne their Church-postures, and there rest; they would pray as hard for purity of heart, as purity of Ordinances. ”