Orthodoxy

“ This is the thrilling romance of Orthodoxy. People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad. It was the equilibrium of a man behind madly rushing horses, seeming to stoop this way and to sway that, yet in every attitude having the grace of statuary and the accuracy of arithmetic. ”

“ You are great Hindus and very orthodox. Ay, what I want to do is to make you more orthodox. The more orthodox you are, the more sensible; and the more you think of modern orthodoxy, the more foolish you are. ”

“ I believe that thousands of men would be orthodox enough in certain points, if divines had not been too curious, or too narrow, in reducing orthodoxy within the compass of subtleties, niceties, and distinctions, with little warrant from Scripture, and less from reason or good policy.
I never saw, heard, nor read, that the clergy were beloved in any nation where Christianity was the religion of the country. Nothing can render them popular, but some degree of persecution. ”

“ But, friends, we are making inroads upon orthodoxy that orthodox Christians are painfully aware of, and what think you will be left of their fearful doctrines fifty or a hundred years from tonight? What will become of their endless hell—their doctrine of the future anguish of the soul; their doctrine of the eternal burning and never-ending gnashing of teeth. Man will discard the idea of such a future—because there is now a growing belief in the justice of a Supreme Being.
Do you not know that every religion in the world has declared every other religion a fraud? ”

“ One might say that any heresy inspires them with less horror than the Catholic doctrine about the Pope, and that they consider the rejection of this doctrine a sufficient proof of a healthy orthodoxy. But the day will come when every Russian who loves orthodoxy above all else will no longer regard with so much horror as now a church which is far better calculated than the Greek Church to furnish him with arms wherewith to defend the divinity of Jesus Christ, the Real Presence, the sacraments, the veneration of Mary and the saints. ”

“ And yet what is progressive orthodoxy, so boldly and ably enunciated, but a growing away from the old Andover creed?
Or is it only a question of emphasis, not of dogma? Are we to infer that the old dogma abides, while only the emphasis alters? It may be that progressive orthodoxy is not what it professes to be, that instead of giving religious thought a definite impulse and being a necessary onward step in sacred learning, religious thought is only receiving a richer and deeper volume as it lies in its old bed. ”

“ Every day the whole thing becomes more and more absurd. Of course there are hundreds and thousands of most excellent people who believe in orthodox religion; people for whose good qualities I have the greatest respect; people who have good ideas on most other subjects; good citizens, good fathers, husbands, wives and children—good in spite of their religion. I do not attack people. I attack the mistakes of people. Orthodoxy is getting weaker every day. ”

“ During those ages in which the Christian Church was so spreading as to become at length the fit cultus of the decaying State, its history is almost wholly one of internal and external strifes, conflicts between the Church and its pagan persecutors, between its literary champions and pagan criticism, between the champions of orthodoxy and the innovating heretics, between the partisans of dogmas whose life-and-death struggle was to determine what orthodoxy was to be. ”

“ An unpractical orthodoxy is as real a peril. You may swallow all the creeds bodily, you may even find in God’s truth the food of very sweet and real feeling: but neither knowing nor feeling is enough. The one all-important question for us is—does our Christianity work? ”

“ I do not think that orthodox religion is popular to-day. The ministers dare not preach the creed in all its naked deformity and horror. They are endeavoring with the vines of sentiment to cover up the caves and dens in which crawl the serpents of their creed. Very few ministers care now to speak of eternal pain. They leave out the lake of fire and brimstone. They are not fond of putting in the lips of Christ the loving words, "Depart from me, ye cursed." The miracles are avoided. In short, what is known as orthodoxy is already unpopular. ”

“ Let us lay to heart the rudimentary and incomplete character of a faith which simply accepts the teaching of Jesus Christ, and does no more. The notion that orthodoxy is Christianity, that a man who does not contradict the teaching of the New Testament is thereby a Christian, is a very old and very perilous and very widespread one. ”

“ The great secret is, to let orthodoxy slide, as something which is neither to be maintained nor refuted,—insisting only on the spirit of Christianity, and applying it to the life of the present day in this land. ”

“ But while on the outside the Midianites of denial were prowling for these clinging souls, within the camp they were assailed by a meticulous orthodoxy that was only too eager to cast them forth. The bishop dwelt for a time upon the curious fierceness orthodoxy would sometimes display. Nowadays atheism can be civil, can be generous; it is orthodoxy that trails a scurrilous fringe. ”

“ But orthodoxy is the Bourbon of the world of thought. It learns not, neither can it forget; and, though at present bewildered and afraid to move, it is as willing as ever to insist that the first chapter of Genesis contains the beginning and the end of sound science; and to visit, with such petty thunderbolts as its half-paralyzed hands can hurl those who refuse to degrade Nature to the level of primitive Judaism."—Lay Sermons, p. ”

“ There, reader, you have the candid confession of an honest-minded, orthodox, and one of the ablest and most talented writers that ever wielded the pen in defense of the Christian faith. And if such a talented and logical mind could find no reason, consistency, or moral principle in the dogmas of orthodoxy, we may readily ask, Who can? Thousands of other orthodox clergymen have doubtless been perplexed with the same difficulties, but have not had the honesty to confess it. Those who do not now perceive them can find the reason by putting their hands on their own heads. ”

“ The rigid forms of orthodoxy, the existence of which was justified before the century of rebirth, will naturally, through the productive power of the national idea and the historical cult, relax and become fertile. ”

“ If you come to that, what is laisser-faire but an orthodoxy? the most tyrannous and disastrous of all the orthodoxies, since it forbids you even to learn. ”

“ Thus while Christ is held to, while orthodoxy is presented as a shield, all imitation of Christ, all anxiety for true and spiritual holiness, “without which no one shall see the Lord,” nay, all the decorum befitting a Christian, is banished, is exterminated, that it may not disturb the societies of perverse men.” ”

“ A genuine first-hand religious experience like this is bound to be a heterodoxy to its witnesses, the prophet appearing as a mere lonely madman. If his doctrine prove contagious enough to spread to any others, it becomes a definite and labeled heresy. But if it then still prove contagious enough to triumph over persecution, it becomes itself an orthodoxy; and when a religion has become an orthodoxy, its day of inwardness is over: the spring is dry; the faithful live at second hand exclusively and stone the prophets in their turn. ”

“ If those who are called the remains of the primitive orthodoxy, out of any particular affection of piety to the holy and Apostolical throne of Jerusalem, would prefer and esteem it above the rest, we have no objection to it: for we ourselves,, though for order's sake we number it in the 4th place, yet pay it the utmost reverence and respect, and honour it as the place where the light of religion and salvation arose, where the redemption of man and the preaching of the Gospel shone out into all the world, and because there our Lord suffered for us, and there shed his precious blood. ”

“ Men and women who are orthodox are generally so for the same reason that they are English or French—they were born in England or France, and cannot help the good or ill fortune of their birth-place. Their orthodoxy is no higher virtue than their nationality. ”

“ I realised, and, once again, not abstractly, but with body and soul, that in Russia, orthodoxy and the existing order of things are inseparably united, and that before both—autocracy and orthodoxy—are rejected together, a new conception of Christianity must first be arrived at. ”

“ In truth, orthodoxy has always had other fish to fry. Physics, which [36] in modern times has almost usurped the name philosophy, in England at least, has felt a little disposed to clothe herself with all the honors of persecution which belong to the real owner of the name. But the bishops, etc. of the Middle Ages knew that the contest between nominalism and realism, for instance, had a hundred times more bearing upon orthodoxy than anything in astronomy, etc. ”

“ For neither does religion consist Orthodoxy, or right opinions; which, although they are not properly outward things, are not in the heart, but the understanding. A man may be orthodox in every point; he may not only espouse right opinions, but zealously defend them against all opposers ”

“ Therefore I take a peculiar interest in those members of our circle who are not “orthodox” Christians. The majority of our Circle are believers in what is called “orthodoxy.” We have some souls who hesitate when they come to definitions about doctrines ”

“ The last chapter has been concerned with the contention that orthodoxy is not only (as is often urged) the only safe guardian of morality or order, but is also the only logical guardian of liberty, innovation and advance. ”

“ I have never had the least sympathy with the a priori reasons against orthodoxy, and I have by nature and disposition the greatest possible antipathy to all the atheistic and infidel school.
Nevertheless, I know that I am, in spite of myself, exactly what the Christian world call, and, so far as I can see, are justified in calling, atheist and infidel. ”

“ First, the purpose of all revelation and the test of all religion is—character and conduct.
It is all very well to know about God, to have our minds filled with true thoughts about Him, His nature, and dealings with us. Orthodoxy is good, but orthodoxy is a means to an end. There should be nothing in [301] a man's creed which does not act upon his life. ”

“ It is sometimes said, that what is called orthodoxy or Catholicism is only the opinion of one or two Fathers—- fallible men, however able they might be, or persuasive—who created a theology, and imposed it on their generation, and thereby superseded Scriptural truth and the real gospel. ”

“ The particular abuse, however, of which we have now to speak, concerns the tendency in orthodox communities, first to exalt orthodoxy above all other elements in religion, and secondly to make the possession of sound beliefs equivalent to the possession of truth. ”

“ Parsi theosophists as champions of the cause of orthodoxy. The advocacy on the part of the theosophists of the revival of the past, and their seeing in such a revival the sole panacea of communal ills, whether real or imaginary, their readiness to allege religious sanction for the time-hallowed customs, matched with their zeal for ritual, and their eagerness to vindicate the sacred ceremonies by giving strained allegorical interpretations to explain them, won for them the applause of the orthodox party, who cast in their lot with them. ”

“ In another way also may the comparatively speaking undisturbed orthodoxy of Western Europe be accounted for. For the orthodox there have been cakes and ale, and even the ass knoweth his owner and the ox his master’s crib. Nothing so keeps men from religious speculation as a good endowment. ”

“ Orthodox believers 'never read the other side.' The mastery of standard Unitarian books is no part of clerical preparation in the Church of England, and orthodox Nonconformist ministers are 'not genuinely and honestly acquainted with the adversary at all.' The moral results of Protestant orthodoxy are, in this writer's opinion, deplorable. ”

“ All preachers of the true spiritual gospel, of a birth, and life from above, by Jesus Christ, ever were, and will be, treated by the reigning fashionable orthodoxy, as enemies to the outward gospel, and its services, just as the prophets of God were by the then reigning orthodoxy, condemned and despised, for calling people to a spiritual meaning of the letter, to a holiness infinitely greater than that of their outward sacrifices, types, and ceremonies. ”

“ Just to the extent to which orthodoxism succeeds in forcing its demand is progress rendered impossible. There have always been brave men to whom truth was dearer than orthodoxy, and to them we owe all the gains the church has made. ”

“ There were two tendencies at work to provoke collisions between{551} the schoolmen and the inquisitors. The ardor of persecution, which rendered the purity of the faith the highest aim of the Christian and the most imperative care of the ruler, secular and spiritual, created an exaggerated standard of orthodoxy, which regarded the minutest point of theology as equally important with the fundamental doctrines of religion. ”

“ The theologians who claim to represent the orthodoxy of by far the great majority of Christians, those of the Church, Eastern or Western, are in the main determined to make every effort to abide in the old paths, and with more or less ingenuity accord themselves with a past supposed unchanging. ”