Revealed religion

“ All the corruptions that have taken place, in theology and in religion have been produced by admitting of what man calls 'revealed religion.' The mythologists pretended to more revealed religion than the christians do. They had their oracles and their priests, who were supposed to receive and deliver the word of God verbally on almost all occasions. ”

“ That this Inquiry into the reality of Divine Revelation has been limited to the claim of Christianity has arisen solely from a desire to condense it within reasonable bounds, and confine it to the only Religion in connection with which it could practically interest us now.
There is nothing in the history and achievements of Christianity which can be considered characteristic of a Religion divinely revealed for the salvation of mankind. ”

“ 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 orthodox, on the other hand, while admitting or declaring that faith should be founded on reason, and that reason could establish a 'religion of nature,' admitted in various ways that a supernatural revelation was an essential corollary or a useful addition to the simple rational doctrine. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Let us, then, labor to banish the wide-spread delusion believed and taught by a thousand systems of worship—Jew, Pagan and Christian—that "religion is of supernatural or divine origin," and the many ruinous errors; senseless dogmas and deplorable soul-crushing superstitions so thoroughly inwrought into the Christian system will vanish like fog before the morning sun, and be replaced by a religion which sensible, intelligent and scientific men and women can accept, and will delight to honor and practice. ”

“ Such being the facts, which cannot be successfully refuted, we must believe that the Christian religion, instead of being of Divine authenticity, as popularly claimed, is purely and entirely of human origin, and that all its teachings relative to a future state are but priestly inventions, concocted for the purpose of enslaving the ignorant masses. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And thus, in the expression of the [48] biographer of Charles V., the barbarous nations when converted to Christianity changed the object, not the spirit, of their religious worship. Many of the ideas of the old religion were consciously tolerated by the first propagators of Christianity, who justly deemed that the new dogmas would be more readily insinuated into the rude and simple minds of their neophytes, if not too strictly uncompromising. ”

“ This Christianity insists on rightness before God; ties no man down to worship in this mountain, nor yet in Jerusalem; on the first day of the week, or the last day; in the church or the fields; socially or in private; with a creed, ritual, priest, symbol, spoken prayer, or without these. It breaks every yoke, seen or invisible; bids men worship in love. It does not ask man to call himself a Christian, or his Religion Christianity. ”

“ When writers on comparative mythology and religion declare that this or that race holds this or that strange belief they do not necessarily mean that such belief is present to the minds of the people in question in the definite and clear-cut fashion that a dogma of the Christian faith may be supposed to present itself to a devout Catholic. A so-called belief, when it comes to be closely examined, is often found to be nothing more than some quaint old fancy that has crystallised itself in the form of a quasi-religious ceremonial. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Since then the religions which we have enumerated,—to wit, philosophy, astrology, idolatry, Judaism, heresy, and Mahometanism,—are the chief religions in the world; and since Christianity surpasses them, both in reasonableness, in miracles, and in all other ways, as immeasurably as Heaven dominates earth, or light darkness; it is plain, that Christianity must be the true religion, and the sure harbour of salvation. ”

“ Religions may disappear, but religious feelings will always create new ones, even with the help of science. A new religion! a new religion! Was it not the ancient Catholicism, which in the soil of the present day, where all seemed conducive to a miracle, was about to spring up afresh, throw out green branches and blossom in a young yet mighty florescence? ”

“ I pass by the Pagan mythology, which, in its understood personifications and allegories, is as beautiful a picture of physical and moral nature, as the Christian Religion itself; and I rest on the Christian, as, when understood, the only religion for human improvement that has been presented to the notice of the human race. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Leaving all ancient miracles and revelation, I will come down to those of our own times, and in our own country.—Strange to tell, there is a sect of people now among us, who sprang up less than half a century ago, whose religion is professedly founded on miracles and revelation. ”

“ And often the question about the symbols or the sacred objects of worship, as distinct from the ideas and personalities, becomes obviously of prime importance for the comparison and classification of religions. Thus the distinction between iconic or idolatrous and aniconic or non-idolatrous cults is of deep significance, for it may correspond to the distinction between a more and a less {41} anthropomorphic conception of the divinity, or to a belief that the embodiment of him in material objects is right and seemly or wrong and unseemly. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And this, my brethren, is the first character by which the religion of Christians is at once distinguished from superstitions and sects. It is the most ancient religion in the world. The first men, before an impious worship was carved out of divinities of wood and of stone, worshipped the same God whom we adore, raised up altars, and offered sacrifices to him, expected from his liberality the reward of their virtue, and from his justice, the punishment of their disobedience. The history of the birth of this religion, is the history of the birth of the world itself. ”

“ What, then, are these Catholic, Protestant, Mohammedan and Buddhist religions? They are not religions at all: they are merely philosophies, or systematised accounts of God, the world, and of man, which have obtained large support in earlier stages of the world's history. ”

“ Looking on the point at which I had arrived,—at that whence all believers set out in order to reach an enlightened mode of worship, I regarded natural religion only as the elements of all religion. I took a survey of that variety of sects which are scattered over the face of the earth, and who mutually accuse each other of falsehood and error. ”

“ Every bible, every sect, every creed, every catechism, and every orthodox sermon teaches that "religion is the gift of God," that "it is infused into the soul by the spirit and power of the Lord." Never was a greater mistake ever committed. Every student of anthropology, every person who has read any of the numerous modern works on mental science, and tested their easily-demonstrated facts, knows that religion is of natural and not supernatural origin; that it is a natural element of the human mind, and not a "direct gift from God;" ”

“ Books rapidly coming into use in the Roman, Greek and Anglican communions as the text-books which represent the prophesied restoration of the Ancient Esoteric doctrine which, by interpreting the mysteries of religion, should reconcile faith and reason, religion and science, and accomplish the downfall of that sacerdotal system, which—"making the word of God of none effect by its traditions"—has hitherto usurped the name and perverted the truth of Christianity. ”

“ Romanism, Rationalism, Arminianism, Synergism, etc., are heathen remnants within, and corruptions of, Christianity, elements absolutely foreign to, and per se subversive of, the religion of divine grace and revelation.
2. The Church and Its Manifestations.—The Christian Church is the sum total of all Christians, all true believers in the Gospel of salvation by Christ and His merits alone. Faith always, and it alone, makes one a Christian, a member of the Church. Essentially, then, the Church, is invisible, because faith is a divine gift within the heart of man, hence beyond human observation. ”

“ From the day of its birth almost to the present hour the Church has been agitated by internal dissensions generated by the efforts of reason to understand and to define those inscrutable mysteries, to a belief in which every supernatural religion must owe its existence. ”

“ As to Catholicism, the records of Councils, the invectives of the Church, show us that, from the beginning, the secondary religion in point of time, the religion of the Church, laboured vainly to suppress, and had in part to tolerate, the primary religion of childish superstitions. ”

“ Our own reason shows us the wound, but nothing short of a divine revelation can discover to us a remedy to be confided in. The case and character of those nations of the earth which had no other guide in their devotions than that of natural light, with some remains of the divine institution of sacrifices received by tradition from their fathers, plainly show how necessary divine revelation is to the subsistence of religion ”

“ But this in my opinion is too narrow a construction. It is true that the term religious is very often used in a limited sense, frequently as synonymous with pious, and sometimes as denoting devotion to a particular creed or mode of worship. Christians, Jews and Mahometans, Protestants and Catholics, and even different sects of Protestants, reciprocally accuse each other of want of religion. And individuals of every denomination are commonly called religious or irreligious, according to their characters for piety. ”

“ Dogma can no more support the mythical element in one religion than in another. The time is coming when Christianity will abandon the effort altogether; but its last stronghold will be the Roman Catholic Church. ”

“ They steadfastly sought to eliminate the miraculous from theological belief, and to expel from the system of religious truth all debatable, difficult or mysterious articles. They aimed at a rational and intelligible faith, professedly in order to make religion, in all its width and depth, the heritage of every man. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Indeed, anticipating for a moment a part of our subject regarding which we shall have more to say hereafter, we may remark that, so far from being original either in its evidence or form, almost every religion which has been taught in the world has claimed the same divine character as Christianity, and has surrounded the person and origin of its central figure with the same supernatural mystery. ”

“ To whatever causes that first prevalence of the religion of the Bible may be attributed, it is still an unquestioned fact that entire nations—not one or two, but many, and in every stage of advancement on the course of civilization—were actually brought {259} to abandon their ancient superstitions, and to profess the Gospel. ”

“ Every Christ came to the world of mankind. Therefore, we must investigate the foundation of divine religion, discover its reality, reestablish it and spread its message throughout the world so that it may become the source of illumination and enlightenment to mankind, the spiritually dead become alive, the spiritually blind receive sight and those who are inattentive to God become awakened. ”

“ The new religion, as it has ever since been called, embodied all the precepts of the ancient faith, recognized the ancient mode of worship giving it a new sanction of the Great Spirit, and also comprehend such new doctrines as came in aptly, to lengthen out and enlarge the original system without impairing it. ”