History of religion

“ This is the explanation which a great critical historian, fully acquainted with the history of other religions, presents, as a satisfactory one, of a phenomenon so astonishing and unique as that of a religion which has suited itself with undiminished vitality to the changes, moral, social, and political, which have marked the eighteen centuries of European history. ”

“ If it was a necessity of human beings at all times to have a religion, it was a no less urgent problem, as the range of vision enlarged with the process of the ages, to harmonise their theology with their thinking. ”

“ Several systems of religion essentially the same in character and spirit as that religion now known as Christianity, and setting forth the same doctrines, principles and precepts, and several personages filling a chapter in history almost identical with that of Jesus Christ, it is now known to those who are up with the discoveries and intelligence of the age, were venerated in the East centuries before a religion called Christian, or a personage called Jesus Christ were known to history. ”

“ A very able critical defence of the genuineness of the New Testament history, of the truth of the miracles and resurrection of our Lord, his superhuman character and 843divine mission, completes a solid and unanswerable argument for the historical basis of Christianity as a divine and supernatural religion. ”

“ In the diversity of the Church will be found a more powerful argument for the divine origin of Christianity itself, than in the most perfect unity. It is not, humanly speaking, surprising that a religion should sustain itself from age to age in the same race and country. ”

“ Die Religion hat nur dann eine Bedeutung für den Menschen, wenn er in der Geschichte einen Punkt findet, dem er sich völlig unbedingt hingeben kann.—Steffens, Christliche Religionsphilosophie, 440, 1839. ”

“ But the fact that the Bible can not be used as the infallible mine of ready-made statements concerning history and morals, will throw him back from the letter to the spirit, from the external proof to the truth which is gained by thought and prayer; while the development of religion described in Scripture, which even now stands forth in clear outline, will be found to be unique in its variety and completeness, and at the same time a type of the development of religion generally. ”

“ The whole of human history before the Christian epoch, in general, and specifically the whole inspired history of patriarchal and Judæan religion, being a record of events looking towards the coming of the Son of God to the earth, the learned professor proceeds logically in making the statements which follow:
“Christianity is the perfect form of religion. In other words, it is the absolute religion, ... the culminating point in the progress of revelation, fulfilling, or filling out to perfection, that which preceded.... In Jesus religion is actually realized in its perfection.... ”

“ It is therefore a lesson all the more worth learning from history that one religion at least, and one of the most ancient and powerful and most widely spread82 religions, has recognized this fact without the slightest hesitation. ”

“ I assume also that Christianity has elements which are not to be found in any other religion,--such as original teachings, divine revelations, and sublime truths. I know it is the fashion with many thinkers to maintain that improvements on the Christian system are both possible and probable, and that there is scarcely a truth which Christ and his apostles declared which cannot be found in some other ancient religion, when divested of the errors there incorporated with it. ”

“ Both thus rest the immense mass of human religious customs and beliefs, which form so large a part of human history, on the precarious foundation of passing fancy and inadvertence, and they must be put into the same category with the naïve theory, once popular, that religion is the invention of priests who sought to control men through their fears. ”

“ In the earliest age of the church, previous to the establishment of Christianity as the state religion, we observe the unaided appeal to argument, and especially the abundant use made of the internal evidence, or philosophical argument concerning the excellence of Christianity, as a means for arresting attention, preparatory to the presentation of the external and historic proof.1029 In the long interval of the middle ages, the church was able to supplement or supersede argument by force ”

“ Christianity, by planting itself emphatically at the very first start, as one may see in the Sermon on the Mount, in direct antagonism to ritualism, ceremonialism, and every variety of externalism, and placing the essence of all true religion in regeneration, or, as St. ”

“ But in the science under consideration, there is no question of religion generally, but of religions, which is a very different thing. By a religion, we generally mean the assembly of beliefs, traditions, and forms of worship which go to make up a faith or cult, and this, as it must, according to the experience of all history, have come into being through the agency of some man or men, should go through the same evolutionary liiiprocess as all other human institutions. ”

“ It is well said, in every sense, that a man's religion is the chief fact with regard to him. ”

“ For in excluding everything extraneous to the actual subject-individual, and requiring religion to be self-evident and necessarily true, it excludes as superfluous and irrelevant, history, tradition, authority, revelation, as ordinarily conceived of, ecclesiastical ordinance, priestly ministration, mediatorial function, vicarious satisfaction, and even the operation of Deity as subsisting without and apart from the man, all of which are essential elements in the accepted conception of religion. ”

“ As Christians they were only to know Christ, and they were not to know him according to the flesh, that is, not as a Jew. So Christianity became at once a catholic religion, consisting in the diffusion of great truths and a divine life. ”

“ Finally, Modern Theology has taken up the work of both of the foregoing epochs by defending the fundamental dogmas of Religion against modern agnostics and heretics, and at the same time carefully attending to the development of doctrine within the Church. ”

“ If then you would know whether christianity be true, it is first of all needful that you read and ponder the Christian books. These books prove themselves. The religion of Christ is felt to be true, as you read the writings in which it is recorded. Just as the works of nature prove to the contemplative mind the being of a God, so do the books of the Christians prove the truth of their religion. ”

“ Such special, characteristic Revelations, Doctrines and Institutions, as we find them in all the great Historical Religions, and in their full normative substance and form in Christianity and Catholicism, can indeed alone completely develop, preserve and spread Religion in its depth and truth; yet they ever presuppose a general, usually dim but most real, religious sense and experience, indeed a real presence and operation of the Infinite and of God in all men. ”

“ The Old Testament, which is the record of the earlier stages of the Christian revelation, distinctly preparatory and prophetic, forms a continual instruction in duty and righteousness. It grounds the moral life essentially in the religious, but religion must walk in holiness. ”

“ It is, indeed, a consideration, creditable, in some measure, to those who admit it, and tending also to prove that christianity is calculated and designed to be an universal religion, that intelligent men of different countries and sects unite in receiving all the essential and practical doctrines of revelation. ”

“ After this long and circuitous digression we may direct our attention now on the specific nature of Christianity as an historical religion, and consider what organization Jesus Christ gave redeemed humanity in the universal church, how he embodied the absolute, universal religion, what means he adopted for achieving the work of the moral regeneration and eternal salvation of mankind. ”

“ But can the doctrine of man's antiquity be made to harmonize with the essentials of Christianity and the inspiration of the Scriptures? If Christianity be a religion for man, as the present writer believes, we answer emphatically in the affirmative. Not the smallest feature that is essential to make Christianity a religion for man, if it be such, will be imperilled by this or any other well-established doctrine [Pg 385] of science. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As it is one of the main characteristics of Christianity itself, that alone of all religions it claims to be founded on historical fact—that its doctrines and precepts, in great measure, have been conveyed to us in the form of history, and that this form has given them a substance, a vitality, a variety, which could, humanly speaking, have been attained in no other way ”

“ For indeed, what probability, what possibility rather, (speaking after the manner of men) is there that Christianity, Scriptural Christianity, should be again the religion of this place? That all orders of men among us should speak and live as men filled with the Holy Ghost? ”

“ The religious spirit, the consciousness of the Absolute, and the reverence for it, should permeate all. Not unfrequently, however, we find that what is meant by religion is theology, or the church ceremonial, and these are only one-sided phases of the total religious process. ”

“ The Christian church blindly follows ancient customs, and when asked for a reason gives superficial and unsatisfactory explanations, either forgetting or ignoring the indisputable fact that each religion is based upon the secret doctrines of its predecessor. ”

“ The Scriptures, the foundation of our faith, were examined by clergymen of very different capacities, dispositions, and views, till by explaining, correcting, allegorising, and otherwise twisting the Bible, men's minds had hardly any thing left to rest on as a doctrine of revealed religion. ”

“ This it is which establishes the title of Christianity as the absolute and final religion of the world—this indissoluble union of the human with the divine—this one only adequate response to the deepest religious cravings of mankind. ”

“ In its advance from authority to freedom, the history of Christian theology supplies a parallel to that of science and that of the state. Christianity, based on the claim of its founder to be the Lord and Saviour of men, finds its strongest and most consistent exponent in the Roman Catholic Church. That Church presents its dogmas with absolute claims to truth and infallibility, and demands the complete submission of mind and will, as the representative on earth of the Divine Saviour. ”

“ It has wrought wonders in all ages, in all places, on all persons, and in all possible varieties of human life. Christianity—the religion of the Bible—has taught the great lessons of devotion, self-government, and benevolence. ”

“ Such an exposition of Christianity, founded on the union of these two categories of proofs, will have the effect of producing a more enlightened and intense conviction of religion in the souls of the faithful, and of stimulating them to more energetic action; and it will have, as its last result, the opening of the door to their wandering brethren, and gathering them back into the bosom of the church. ”

“ Our people not only created the noblest religion of the ancient world, a religion which is destined to become the common property of the entire civilized world, but continued to develop it, keeping pace with the progress of the human spirit. ”

“ Certain it is that the conception of Christianity as the absolute religion, as a revelation possessing supreme objective authority, and offering a precise, definite, and inerrant teaching regarding all the great problems of life, was the dominant idea to which he ever clung. ”

“ Religion should be disentangled as much as possible from history and authority and metaphysics, and made to rest honestly on one’s fine feelings, on one’s indomitable optimism and trust in life. ”

“ Let us say that it is true that they derive those theories from their cursory reading of the Bible, but they emphasize some one point or other, or various points which they unite into a system of belief, and then insist that what they have derived and emphasized is the true and only belief from the Bible and hence the true religion, and everything which is contrary to their view is heresy. They then teach their view, or interpretation, to others about them, and confirm what they reach from the passages which they think prove the completeness of their new phase of religion. ”

“ Two causes are obviously assignable for Christianity in all its essential features and phases, being so strikingly similar to the ancient pagan systems which preceded it, as also the close analogies of all the principal systems, whose doctrines and practical teachings have found a place on the pages of history. ”

“ And as the study of fallen religions is principally useful as it shows to us the superiority of that religion which can never fall, let us first see upon what footing Christianity stands in this respect. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In contradiction to that most grave and deplorable error by which many unbelievers of our own day, more than those of an earlier period, love to confound religion with philosophy, we firmly hold the principle which was efficaciously and unanimously sustained by the ancient sages, pagan as well as Christian, that religion is the chief end to which philosophy is directed. ”